Carbon Arts

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!

5 Recent Things

Brickets

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

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.

Measuring Cup

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?’

Newsmotion

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.

Fish Bellies

A new interactive sculpture at the Texas State University Campus aims to draw comparisons between it’s students and it’s local river life. Representative of a school of fish, visitors can interact with Fish Bellies by climbing on it and influencing its colour changes. It’s creators, JB Public Art, hope that by drawing comparisons between the social behaviour of fish and of students, the latter can become curious and engaged in the ecology and biology specific to their campus.

5 Random Things

Climate Bubbles

Climate Bubbles was a playful, participatory, mass data collection project in Manchester which engaged citizens in collecting information on air flow, thereby informing the Met Office about the Heat Island Effect. Futuresonic and Landcaster University teamed up with the Met Office to work with artists and scientists to devise an inventive, engaging way to collect this otherwise elusive data. Lead artists were Drew Hemment, Alfie Dennen, and Carlo Buontempo.

Feral Robotic Dogs

Feral Robotic Dogs is a project initiated by artist, Natalie Jeremijenko, who heads up xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University. Robotic dogs, desperate to perform more useful tasks than the ones they were programmed for, are released into contaminated environments where they can ‘sniff’ out harmful chemicals and communicate this information to interested community members via an open source platform. A playful introduction to a serious topic, feral robotic dogs is one of a series of projects by Jeremijenko that explore the use of art and technology to effect social and environmental change

Solar Ballerinas

Solar ballerinas – or audio tutus -  is the work of Benoit Maubrey, who has developed a number of electro-acoustic scupltures. The tutus respond to the sun’s intensity by emitting sound that corresponds to the level of light. The tutus also pick up on local sounds and feed these back, generating sound loops. As the dancer moves the white noise and sampled sounds change, creating a performance that is fascinating and hard to ignore.

Flow

Flow by Owl Project and Ed Carter, is a remarkable new public art work in Newcastle that explores the relationship between art, environment, design and industry. Commissioned for the London 2012 Olympic games as part of its cultural program, Flow is at once tidemill, river monitor and electo-acoustic performance. Inside the mill are housed three pieces of musical machinery: the Salinity Sequencer, the Bubble Synth and a Laser Turbidatron, all of which create unique real-time soundscapes in response to hourly river water samples and audience interaction.