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

Birding the Future

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?”

Within Invisibility

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.

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?’

5 Random Things

River Livers

Greenmeme’s River Livers are constructed wetland sculptures that aim to raise awareness about water quality and habitat loss. The sculptures actively break down pollutants in the water, and at the same time communicate environmental data, such as PH, to onlookers through colour-coded LED lights.

Handcar: On the Grid

Maria Michails is a Canadian artist working at the intersect of ecology, technology and society. Her Handcar Projects are interactive works that employ the dynamism and historical context of the handcar to literally take the viewer on a journey to explore themes such as energy, industrial processes and mining. Through activating the human powered handcar (and in another project a rowing machine) the installations provide a direct relationship between energy consumption and expenditure. In On the Grid (pictured), the work examines the conflicts between competing uses of land for energy, housing and food.

Secret Life of Things

The Secret Life of Things was a series of animations, commissioned by EPA Victoria and company Eco Innovators, for the State of Design festival 2010 in Melbourne, communicating the life-cycle impacts of common products. Life-pscyclology – the secret life of the phone is one of them. Created by Layla Acaroglu, it depicts a phone going to therapy to try and discover why he’s been abadoned and how he can emark on a new life – based on the valuable materials contained within him. Very cute!

Dark Sky

Tiffany Holmes’ installation Dark Sky juxtaposes a table of lamps that can be turned on and off by visitors of the gallery with an animation of fireflies on a black screen. The flow of electricity from the collection of lamps determines the activity of the fireflies. When all the lights are on the fireflies are still, when all off they are numerous and in flight – and everything in between. A poetic way of visualising the impact of our energy use on the environment.

Buried Light

Buried light was a collaborative installation, by artist-designers Rachel Wingfield, Hiaz Gimachi and Greta Corke, at the V&A museum in London using dynamic wallpaper to represent domestic energy consumption in Britain. An immersive experience, participants could turn appliances on and off, which in turn affected the patterns and colour of the wallpaper.