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?’
The Canary Project is Edward Morris and Susannah Sayler, two Americans who have successfully set out to meet the aims of this organisation to energise action on climate change through the production of visual art, design and events that increase understanding of climate change with the public. Since 2006, The Canary Project has generated and supported a diverse body of work, and remains one of only two US arts organisations solely dedicated to art about climate change.
The Silent Evolution is a permanent underwater installation of 400 life-size sculptures off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. Artist Jason de Caires Taylor‘s work is both functional and poetic – the sculptures, taken from casts of people of all walks of life, also function as artificial reefs thereby contributing to the restoration of the environment. With reef systems set to disappear with the advent of climate change, these works present an optimistic and thoughtful response. Visitors to the installation can swim between the sculptures and experience the unique play of light and perspective that come from an underwater setting. Over time the work will change with the ocean environment in a silent evolution of materials responding to natural forces.
Modelled on any other health clinic, Natalie Jeremijenko’s NYU xClinic prescribes treatments for your environmental aches and pains. Newsmotion is a prototype for a roaming bulletin board which can be retro-fitted to your bike wheels, and delivers data to those around you based on where you are. For instance, onlookers might be made aware of pedestrian and cyclist fatality statistics for the very corner they’re standing on, thereby bringing the data to life.
Reduce Arts Flights is a work by artist, Gustav Metzger, responding to the proliferation of arts fairs and arts tourism, and associated air travel. Produced as a leaflet the work is intended as a campaign to encourage artists and the arts industry to reflect on mass mobilization and address its own carbon footprint. The logo, reduced to RAF, is a reference to the Royal Airforce as well as the Red Army Faction conjuring up images of airforce destruction and reflecting the artist’s longstanding opposition to capitalism and the commercialisation of art.
This touching, award-winning theatrical performance Alvin Sputnik, Deep Sea Explorer reveals the human condition at the end of the world when seas have risen to overtake most of humanity. Using a masterful combination of animation, puppetry and song, artist Tim Watts charts the adventures of an average guy sent to the bottom of the sea to find another version of Earth hidden in the Earth’s core. Humorous, but ultimately damning, the performance is a warning tale for adults and children alike of what we stand to lose if we continue to bury our heads in the sand.