Creative solutions for a changing climate
Here’s where we share all the cool projects we’ve come across. Ones that inspire, surprise and touch the heart. In all these ways we see how artists open new avenues for change. Click on the categories below to browse our directory of projects. Enjoy!
Birding the Future is a sound and stereoscopic installation that brings extinct birds back to life. Reflecting on the role of birds as warning messengers and their disappearance as part of the ‘sixth extinction’, the project asks: “What does it mean that we can only see and hear extinct species through technology? How can traditional ecological knowledge be combined with technological advances to increase awareness of our role in the environment?”
Artist Jiayu Liu uses wind data from 40 Chinese cities to power a poetic installation that seeks to test the boundaries of data representation at the same time connecting us to a powerful force of nature. An innovative use of city data, we’re excited by what the work of this RCA graduate might bring to the realisation of more sensitive and sustainable urban environments.
Could it take a a synthetic representation of nature to jolt us back into re-appreciating its beauty and our reliance upon it? That’s one the questions Pierre Proske is seeking to explore with his Brickets. So named for their chirping sounds and brickish size, the Brickets reinterpret data from local environmental sources such as the nearest home’s water usage, into animal like calls, which rise and ebb in response to one another, much like a synthesised colony of frogs, cicadas or crickets.
KiloWatt Hours, by Sydney based artist Tega Brain, uses lasers to inscribe in space the fluctuations of energy used by the surrounding building over time. KiloWatt Hours thus converts energy meter data into the readable form of an ‘energy clock.’, and the audience is prompted to consider the invisible consumption of energy in everyday life. Over time the laser light fades, and KiloWatt Hours forgets itself, in the same way we let our own energy use slip from memory.
A simple representation of Sydney’s climate data, Mitchell Whitelaw’s Measuring Cup makes it possible to hold the past 150 years of temperature information in the palm of your hand. Generated and printed using 3D technology, Measuring Cup uses temperature averages, like the rings of a tree, only stacked vertically. The result is delicate and beautiful, like the climate it represents, and it raises the question ‘what shape will it take in 10, 20 or 50 years?’
Distracted, a poetic interpretation of scientific ice core samples taken in Antarctica, is the work of Brisbane-based art, design, and media production collective Kuuki. An installation of acrylic tubes housing LEDs, resin bubbles, found organic matter and sensors, Distracted is an evocative and interactive experience, evoking ice, fluids and the notion of change. A number of data sets are used to create the abstract visualisation and sonification in the work, creating a unique context for understanding human presence and impact on the planet.
Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno‘s work speaks to us of an alternative way of living, through the creation of self-contained ecosystems that invite us to live in floating worlds or bubbles, free from borders and free from a potentially polluted world. He approaches the subject of climate change from the viewpoint of an architect offering a Utopic vision, one which is both inviting and frightening if we consider that we might need to create alternative worlds if we continue to allow the earth to degrade. Saraceno’s work also poetically emphasises the links between all living things through the intricate and complex web that his own creations exhibit.
Plunge is a new climate change-themed public artwork in the City of London by artist Michael Pinsky. Sited in three locations around key historic monuments, Plunge communicates future sea level rise through an elegant series of LED powered rings. Each ring shows where the Thames is expected to reach in the year 3111 if current carbon pollution trends continue. In the words of the artist, at one level the work places the viewer deep below the water’s surface, and at another level the work “suggests a protective shell, proposing that we have a chance to change this situation.”
COAL is a Paris-based organisation that stands for ‘coalition pour l’art et le développement durable’, translated as the coalition for art and sustainable development. It brings together professionals in contemporary art with environmental and research professionals. They award an annual prize of 10,000 euros to a contemporary artist proposing an environmentally themed work. They also commission exhibitions, events and generate publications.
Public Smog is a conceptual work by artist Amy Balkin, which seeks to challenge the wisdom of carbon trading (and the trading of other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide). By purchasing these credits and presenting them as a public park in the air, Balkin confronts the economic notion of clean air as a public commons and the use of property rights to solve problems of air pollution. The work points to the difficulties inherent in communicating and addressing the issue of emissions reduction, and serves as a stimulating departure point for inter-disciplinary debate.