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?’
Doomed, a video work by Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, consists of a series of edited catastrophic moments spanning the last 50 or so years of cinema. This relentless experience of disaster becomes almost comic as we face up to our human fascination with the destructive forces of nature – including those of our own making. Doomed gives us pause to consider whether we somehow, subconsciously desire this end and whether such warnings will have the ability to turn us away from our doomed path.
Cape Farewell was created by David Buckland in 2001 to instigate a cultural response to climate change. Since then Cape Farewell has organised a series of expeditions of artists, communicators and scientists to the High Arctic. The results are published in a book, on the web in a blog, on a DVD of a show that aired on the BBC and throughout exhibitions where these artists have been invited. Behind the organisation is a belief that artists – with their unique vision and approach – can assist in a cultural values shift that engages the public in avoiding dangerous climate change.
ecoartspace, created in 1997 by Tricia Watts, was one of the first organisations dedicated to art and environmental issues. The organisation is diverse in its approach to connecting arts and environment, but places special emphasis on education and connecting people aesthetically with a broader view of their place within a larger ecosystem.
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.
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.