CARBON ARTS | creative solutions for a changing climate find us on: 
Behaviour change is a term often used to describe the human response to climate change and is a constant source of frustration for those working in the field. Sure, we can green our grid and introduce cleaner forms of power, but if people would change their patterns of consumption of energy, improve their rates of recycling and travel by car and plane less, we’d also achieve a lot. Getting people to change their behaviour is hard! The pathways to behaviour change are many and complex, and may start with a profound and poetic realisation of our place within nature – a transformation that art can assist. The use of real-time data in artworks or other forms of instant gratification and reward can drive a more direct path to behaviour change. Here are some works that we think do this in diverse and fun ways.
Monometers, by Michael Pinsky
Michael Pinsky transformed Belgium’s four largest wind turbines into an ecological monitor or meter displaying the energy and water consumption and noise and waste generation of a night-time festival. These were indicated by the movement of rings of light up and down the turbines communicating the ecological pulse of the festival to the surrounding region.
The Fun Theory is an initiative of Volkswagen in Sweden – a competition of ideas – that is based on the theory that you can get people to change their behaviour by making it fun to do the right thing. Turning the stairs next to an escalator in a public metro into a giant musical piano keyboard created a shift of 66% of users to the stairs instead of the elevator. A rubbish bin in a park that makes a funny noise when waste is deposited encouraged people to clean up the park for the pure joy of throwing away waste. Such demonstrations show the power of creativity to make a measurable difference. Watch the amusing videos on their website.
Trashtrack
TrashTrack is the work of MIT’s Senseable Cities Lab, and part of a vision for creating behavioural change through pervasive technologies. By attaching sensors to individual items of rubbish and visualising its passage through the waste stream, the project raises awareness about waste disposal and the impacts of our smallest decisions, such as the purchase of a disposable coffee cup.
Tidy Street is the name of a residential street in Brighton and also the name of a project that engages residents in reducing their energy consumption. The high-tech – smart meters in every home – is combined with the low-tech – chalk sprayed on the road surface, to demonstrate the community’s progress in cutting carbon emissions. Local artist Snub was commissioned to do the artwork, which showcases significant progress – up to 30% reductions in some homes – and creates a great conversation piece for passersby.
Nuage Vert, or Green Cloud, is a public art installation by artists He He performed in Helsinki in 2008 in collaboration with Helsinki Energy. By projecting green light onto the smoke emitted from a city power station the changing output of the station is visible. This provided a means for communicating the results of efforts to reduce energy use in the district, whereby campaigns to turn off lights, and so forth, had visible effect. Helsinki Energy initiated a release of real-time energy information as a result. A clever and simple way to provide a feedback loop to the public, Nuage Vert looks is seeking funds to do the same in Paris.
The Beat Your Mouse Movement is a project by Kitchen Budapest to encourage people to walk farther in a day than the distance travelled by their computer mouse. Believe it or not, after 8 hours in front of a PC, the small movements of a mouse add up! Through an application, called Mousey, that tabulates the distance travelled by the mouse, the user is challenged to enter in distanced walked through an i-Phone ap, or pedometer. Pachube’s online platform for data sharing makes all this data open source. A great message and means to get balance back into our lives, and combat unsustainable behaviour patterns.
Particle Falls is the work of artists Andrea Polli and Chuck Varga, which visualises real-time small particulate matter air pollution (PM 2.5) in downtown San Jose via the changing scale of a laser light cascade on the side of a city building. The work is made possible through the AirNow project which shares live air pollution data throughout the US. It aims to raise awareness amogst the public of air pollution and thereby encourage behavioural change. The piece is also accompanied by an real time web visualisation.