A still from New York artist Catherine Chalmers' video "Squish" in CMU's "Animal Nature" exhibition. Click photo for larger image.

A cockroach the size of a deer scampers across the wall in front of you at the entry to "Animal Nature," an exhibition at the Regina Gouger Miller Gallery in which 17 artists explore the ways humans construct perceptions of the planet's other animals.

The exhibition at Carnegie Mellon University, co-curated by gallery director Jenny Strayer and two of the artists, is among several current shows that feature artwork inspired by some component of man's relationship to his environment.

"Becoming Animal" at the sprawling Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams comprises contemporary work ranging from an unsettling, brief animation by Japanese artist Motohiko Odani that includes such transgenic creatures as hopping frogs with human ears growing out of their backs to an in-depth overview of the disturbing psychological probings by Swede Ann-Sofi Siden, including her video "QM, I think I call her QM," exhibited in the 1999-2000 Carnegie International. The exhibition continues through February.

"Hidden in Plain Sight/The Forest in the City" at the Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, Downtown, and "Birdspace/A Post-Audubon Artists Aviary," at the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University, Ohio, opened last week. The next Miller Gallery exhibition is "Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art."

Since none of these were planned in conjunction with the others, and all have been in the making for months if not years, their coincidental appearance seems a zeitgeist phenomenon. Artists' explorations of environmental issues is not new, of course, and may be argued back to the Hudson River School. But contemporary anxiety over topics ranging from global warming to genetic engineering have added new twists to expression, and the implication of environmental abuses in Katrina's toll reasserts the urgency of such concerns.

That said, the new-media-dominated exhibition at the Miller Gallery is not without humor, albeit given buoyancy by an underlying darkness.

Animator extraordinaire James Duesing and Jessica Hodgins (with Moshe Mahler, Jay O'Berski, Sang II Park, Bum Lee and David Tinapple) satirize clueless consumption in the polished computer animation "Oral Fixations," a seven-hour repetitive endeavor one encounters, somewhat absurdly, in the elevator that connects the gallery's three floors.

Quintessentially British humor enlivens Britons Edwina Ashton's and Steve Baker's quirky installation "Salon of Becoming Animal." A scrambling of short videos that enlist funky puppets in unlikely conversations, and a hunting blind through which one may peer across the gallery outfitted with ape paws and binoculars, are united by an aesthetic that segues traditional watercolor landscape with contemporary cartoon culture. Targets range from hunting practices to those of galleries, as with a found cartoon that shows a man dashing outdoors to witness an exotic bird sighting, rifle in hand, or a pair of rigid oversized mitts with index finger raised accompanying the instruction to "Please wear the gloves provided here before handling the books. Thank you."

Lyricism characterizes art-ist/musician Michael Pestel's work. The poetic harmony of his uplifting "Lyrebird Project," which arose from a visit to Australia where he interacted with the showy birds, makes for a calming, mesmerizing installation that occupies the bright, third floor space he's previously graced. While a video and tape are no substitute for the sensuousness of actual performance, the piece still offers an experience both contemplative and conceptual.

There is no levity in Andrew Johnson's potent "Fleece," a nearly 40-minute long video in four "acts" that reference theatrical as well as Biblical constructs and typifies the artist's intense presentations of political issues within visually charged settings. The video is projected into a large cylindrical structure comprising open blocks that could be construed as Middle Eastern in design.

Leaning upon its edge, the viewer peers down as into a well, an illusion that becomes remarkably indistinct from reality as one watches, for example, a white sheep trapped in water to its middle, searching its circular confinement for escape. As the animal dips its head below water, looks upward quizzically and bleats when it hears other sheep, the viewer is forced to confront its reasoning and its attempt at communication. As the shadow of a helicopter moves overhead, one's mind drifts to the metaphoric functions of this sacrificial lamb.

While one realizes that ultimately Johnson's sheep will be set free, the cockroach referenced at the beginning of the review won't fare as well.

He and his cohorts scurry to a percussive track through Catherine Chalmers' one and three-quarter minute video "Squash," part of her "American Cockroach Series," animating a wall-sized projection with enlarged antenna and segmented legs to queasy effect. At the ultimate end, the screen goes dark but the nauseating crack of crisp exoskeleton is undeniable.

The roach in "Burning at the Stake" is worse off, if imaginable, since the death is mercilessly slow. Vertically secured to a small wooden post and facing the camera, he at first appears to be assessing his predicament. When a match is struck and the kindling below lit, immediate distress is reflected in the facial expression, furiously kicking legs and attempt to spread his wings. Over 3.43 minutes, the film records the fiery immolation and ends as gray smoke surrounds the stump of what remains of the charred body.

Chalmers, who holds a Stanford undergraduate degree in engineering and a painting MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, is known for her artistic photographic documentations of food chain activities, such as worms eating tomatoes and snakes eating baby mice. She's been widely exhibited (including in such venues as Mass MoCA, the Corcoran in Washington, D.C., and P.S. 1 in New York), written about in such publications as Artnews, Artforum and Harper's and has appeared on PBS and the BBC.

Whether it is Chalmers' intent to challenge viewer's prejudices and instill sympathy for her subjects is beside the point when one considers their wanton abuse. While it's true that the roach presumably crushed for the film's sound track is not the first, or last, to meet that fate, torturing a creature by lighting it afire is well down a slippery slope.

Inspiring a similar critique is the work of Eduardo Kac, whose genetic alteration of a white rabbit so that it glows green resulted in outraged headlines in global media. These are combined in a digitally randomized, barely readable font that says something about his provocation, but as an artwork is about as interesting as any other compilation of lab data.

Several other works of greater or lesser interest and accomplishment -- including two interactive computer works, one of which invites the visitor to contribute a sample of his/her saliva -- complete this thought-provoking and timely exhibition.

"Animal Nature" is an offshoot of an ongoing Web project which may be visited at www.criminalanimal.org.

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"Animal Nature" continues through Oct. 2. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free. For information, visit www.cmu.edu/millergallery.