SevGen’s story is published in a the Social Alternatives Magazine

 

THE SUSTAINABILITY PRISM: EXPLORATIONS IN SUSTAINABILITY AND LANGUAGE

VOLUME NO.
31 [4]

PUBLICATION DATE
2012

Social Alternatives is an independent, quarterly refereed journal which aims to promote public debate, commentary and dialogue about contemporary social, political, economic and environmental issues.

Social Alternatives analyses, critiques, and reviews contemporary social issues and problems.

The journal seeks to generate insight, knowledge, and understanding of our contemporary circumstances in order to determine local, national, and global implications.

They are committed to the principles of social justice and to creating spaces of dialogue intended to stimulate social alternatives to current conditions.

Social Alternatives values the capacity of intellectual and artistic endeavour to prompt imaginative solutions and alternatives and publishes refereed articles, review essays, commentaries and book reviews as well as short stories, poems, images and cartoons.

The journal has grappled with matters of contemporary concern for three decades, publishing articles and themed issues on topics such as: peace and conflict, racism, Indigenous rights, social justice, human rights, inequality and the environment.

 

THE SUSTAINABILITY PRISM: EXPLORATIONS IN SUSTAINABILITY AND LANGUAGE

AUTHORS

 

 

ABSTRACT

The cover design concept for this issue theme, ‘The Sustainability Prism: Exploration in sustainability and language’, is the prism. The design utilizes chroma-depth printing technologies to produce a 3D space using colours of the prism. This printing method offsets red (the longest wavelength) to the forefront and violet light (the shortest wavelength) to the background. This makes red objects appear to float in the air whilst blue and violet objects to seem to recede into the background. The chromo-stereoscopic phenomenon gives the illusion of depth when using glasses with lenses made of minute holographic prisms that are provided with this issue.

Stylistic butterflies are used to further enhance the prismatic concept. Butterfly wings are colourless, consisting of a translucent membrane covered by a layer of microscopic scales. These tiny scales produce what is termed ‘structural colours’, similarly to the way that a prism produces colour when it catches the light in a certain way: ‘Light passes through the tiny scales and is reflected multiple times, giving the butterfly wings its iridescence’ (‘Butterfly biology’ 1999).

The symbolic representation of the butterflies also references the ‘butterfly effect’, a term used in ‘chaos theory’ and attributed to mathematician, Edward Norton Lorenz, ‘to describe how small changes to a seemingly unrelated thing or condition can affect large, complex systems’ (‘What is the butterfly effect?’ 2012). This reflects the many contributions in this issue from authors of various cultures around the globe which stem which from one source, the editor, who flapped his wings – and the result is a wave of diverse, challenging and inspirational viewpoints.