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?’
The Fun Theory is an initiative of Volkswagen in Sweden – a competition of ideas – that is based on the theory that you can get people to change their behaviour by making it fun to do the right thing. Turning the stairs next to an escalator in a public metro into a giant musical piano keyboard created a shift of 66% of users to the stairs instead of the elevator. A rubbish bin in a park that makes a funny noise when waste is deposited encouraged people to clean up the park for the pure joy of throwing away waste. Such demonstrations show the power of creativity to make a measurable difference. Watch the amusing videos on their website.
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.
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.
Greenmeme’s Hyperion-Son of Uranus is a sculptural visualisation of the sewerage infrastructure of LA county, represented as a time-stamp in 2009. Commissioned for the new Environmental Learning Center for the Hyperion Wastewater Treatment plant, the grid-like structure bulges where pipes are largest creating a unique topography from volumetric data. Fashioned from recycled street signs collected from CalTrans over 3 years, Hyperion flashes green and silver as light hits the surface, a reminder of the multiple layers of infrastructure both visible and hidden.
Nuage Vert, or Green Cloud, is a public art installation by artists HeHe performed in Helsinki in 2008 in collaboration with Helsinki Energy. By projecting green light onto the smoke emitted from a city power station the changing output of the station is visible. This provided a means for communicating the results of efforts to reduce energy use in the district, whereby campaigns to turn off lights, and so forth, had visible effect.Helsinki Energy initiated a release of real-time energy information as a result. A clever and simple way to provide a feedback loop to the public, Nuage Vert looks is seeking funds to do the same in Paris.