Carbon Arts

CARBON ARTS | creative solutions for a changing climate find us on: facebook

5 Recent Posts

Park Spark

The Park Spark project is an urban intervention that questions our waste infrastructure and engages people directly in re-imagining uses for waste products. Artist Matthew Mazotta has created a system that literally transforms dog waste into energy in a New York City park, avoiding waste to landfill. By turning a crank dog-owners power a methane digester and provide the fuel source for an adjacent gas lamp. This ‘eternal flame’ will burn until a member of the public suggests an alternative use for this ‘excess’ resource. Part education, part provocation and part solution, this innovative arts project reconnects people to their environment in a very tangible way.

Tags: , , —

Animal Wall

Animal Wall by artist Gitta Gschewendter is a large-scale public artwork that provides 1000 apartments for bats and birds. Situated along a 50 metre wall, Animal Wall was commissioned as part of a new residential development in Cardiff, Wales, and mirrors the provision of the 1000 homes for humans. A direct response to the loss of natural habitat that housing developments are partially responsible for, the artwork contributes both practically and aesthetically to the needs of public space.

Tags: , , —

Live forever

Live Forever is the work of artists Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess whose practice Infranatural seeks to tie the built environment to the natural pulse of a living city. A Los Angeles fire station is host to the public art work, which acts as a barometer of the county’s fire risk through a web of humidity & temperature sensors stretched across the facade like a a growing vine.  LED lights at each node flash across the building in shades of blue to red, making people aware of their environment, frequently warning them to take care with sparks and cigarettes.

Tags: , , , —

Plunge

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.”

Tags: , , —

WasteLandscape

WasteLandscape, formed from 65,000 discarded CDs around inflatable hills, installed at the Halle d’Aubervilliers in Paris, is a glistening reminder of the value of an everyday, soon-to-be-obsolete object. The exhibit will travel around the world before being recycled. Architect Clémence Eliard and artist Elise Morin are committed to demonstrating the role of art role in society, raising consciousness of environmental problems.

Tags: , —

5 Random Posts

Art at the Dump – Recology

The Recology Artist in Residence program in San Francisco started twenty years ago in 1990 to invite artists to produce works sourced from the waste stream, as part of a program to educate the public at a time when curb-side recycling was introduced. This exhibition, at Intersection Arts, celebrates the impressive body of work generated from materials that would otherwise have gone to waste. The artists involved often became strong spokespeople for environmental issues following their experience.

Tags: , —

Rekindling Venus

Rekindling venus is an augmented reality project that uses digital platforms – the web, the smart phone – to connect us to the world’s coral reefs and their plight in a changing climate, drawing on real-time data, video and imagery. It is the work of Australian installation artist Lynette Walworth, who has collaborated with marine biologists, climate change modellers, underwater cinematographers and meteorologists, to bring focus to the complexity of coral ecosystems as they attempt to deal with increasing environmental stresses. The work will have a second phase in 2012 to show at planetariums around the world.

Tags: , , —

Natural Fuse

Natural Fuse is city-wide network of units each consisting of a plant, an electrical device (a lamp or radio), a plug, a fuse and water bottles. Designed by artist Usman Haque, the self-sustinaning network of units acts as a very tangible and didactic means for exploring our impact on the global environment in a local way. The units, given to individual householders, are are connected to each other via sensors and a web-based platform. The plants’ individual and collective survival depends on the actions of the set of owners in the way they use the electrical devices that are connected to them. A little like a carbon-trading scheme in reverse, the ability of the network of plants to store carbon is the limiting factor on the extent to which the energy consuming devices, for example, can be switched on. Interestingly, users can also opt to be selfish by continuing to use the device beyond the carrying capacity of the system. If they do so, however, they will kill someone else’s plant. An intricate lesson in science and morality, Usman’s work is still actively employed by a few selfless survivors in New York, USA  and San Sebastien, Spain.

Tags: , , —

xAirport – prepare for wetland-ings!

Getting ready for flight

Natalie Jeremijenko’s xAirport project for the SJ01 festival is on the surface a fun zipline flight for participants to fly like a bird within a 10 foot wingspan over a constructed wetland. But of course, there are a host themes being explored through this participative performance. The recent decision by the FAA to ease the passage to personal sport-piloting threatens to put further stress on the environment, unless those small craft are encouraged to make ‘wet-landings’. Whereas air flight has contributed to date to major wetland loss through airport construction, small personal craft owners have the option to build wetland landing strips, and turn this trend around. Can we re-imagine flight and make personal airborne travel a viable alternative to infrastructure-heavy options?

Tags: , , , —

Green Patriot Posters

Green Patriot posters is a project supported by The Canary Project to mobilise action on climate change through attention arresting poster campaigns. Working with students, designers and open to the general public, many posters were produced and displayed around the US in the spirit of WWII mobilisation efforts.

Tags: , , —