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?’
A project of the RSA and Canon Europe, the WEEE man is made up of all the electronic waste that one typical UK person generates in a lifetime, from fridges to stereos to stove-tops. Created to illustrate and communicate the purposes of the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Products Directive, the WEEE man first appeared along the Thames in London in 2006, and was supported by Canon Europe. A fabulous visualisation feat, the WEEE man is an excellent example of the power of art to communicate the impacts of individual consumer choices, and generate support for legislation to address the need to recycle.
Mirage brings an iceberg to a city’s public square using 3D photography and a unique viewing system that allows for an up-close and personal experience of wonder. Through the positioning of binocular shaped ‘viewers’ around Melbourne’s iconic Federation Square, artist David Burrows creates the actual scale of the iceberg, which took about 30 minutes to walk around and occupied the same space as many city centre buildings. Burrows developed Mirage from an expedition to Antarctica as 2011’s Australian Antarctic Division Arts Fellow, Visual Artist.
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.
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.
Artists Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang have been collecting plastic washed up on their local North Californian beach since 1999 and making it to art in an ongoing project called Beach Plastic. Their plastic collages and installations are photographed and bound into art books – pictured here is a stunning collection of Kraft cheese dip sticks! The Pacific Ocean alone is polluted with about 100 million tons of floating trash, 80-percent of which came from land-based sources. Through their consistent efforts, the pair are now experts on ocean pollution, and find hope through the communication of the impacts of a throw-away society that comes from their work.