Things We Like | Carbon Arts

5 Recent Things

Every one, Every day

Priscilla Bracks and Gavin Sade took their studio name from the Japanese idea of kuuki which considers ‘things we take for granted but cannot live without.’ Interestingly, the literal translation is ‘atmosphere.’ Cleverly combining these ideas, Every One, Every Day is a 27m3 cube, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of greenhouse gas produced by, yep, every one of us, every single day. Made from recycled plastic supplied by Visy (and returned to Visy at the end of the festival), the temporary installation is animated by an internal LED-lit sphere which responds to energy grid data from the Australian Energy Market. As part of the Vivid Festival, Every One, Every Day is a big hulking reminder of the impact we each make on our life sustaining planet.

when I was buoyant

The subjects in Josh Wodak‘s series of futurist portraits ‘when I was buoyant’, confront us with the dual realities of climate change and human nature. Posing in position of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, of Al Gore fame, their arms become the axis for plotting sea level rise which stretches 1,000 years into the past to a moment when, as Wodak point out, King Canute defiantly and eventually dejectedly faced the rising tide. The portraits offer up the space between the present moment and the fated year 2028 (when global temperatures are expected to rise 2 degrees), eerily questioning our ability to stay afloat.

Edible Estates

American artist Fritz Haeg is leading a project which aims to encourage families and other housing groups to replace the ubiquitous front lawn with edible front gardens. Each garden responds to its specific location and conditions, with a view to promoting ‘a more productive use of the land between our homes and the street, and a closer relationship with neighbours, our food, and the natural environment.’ While most of the prototype gardens are in the United States, Edible Estates are cropping up (pardon the pun) in parts of Europe as well, however, the artist considers it a global project and the website is full of information on how we can all nurture our own food bowl.

Earth V Sky

Heralding the arrival of new and renewable wind power to the City of Sydney, Earth versus Sky is a nightly performative artwork in the City of Sydney, Australia. As the sun begins to set, an onsite surveillance camera takes a picture of the sky and calculating an average colour for every 5 seconds during 1.5 hours, the installation re-projects the inverse of this colour onto two, large Moreton Bay Fig trees, with spectacular results. The work of artist, Allan Giddy, himself a pioneer in renewable energy technologies, Earth v Sky brings a new awareness and sensitivity to the environment through public art.

Surface Tension

In 2012 Eyebeam Art & Technology Center presented Surface Tension, an exhibition and arts lab developed by Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, which brought together work by international artists, designers, engineers and scientists to explore the future of water. The work exhibition examines water’s physical properties, its role in politics and economics, and ways in which it may be harnessed, cleaned, and distributed.

5 Random Things

Public Smog

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.

Every one, Every day

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.

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.

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.