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?’
A project of the RSA and Canon Europe, the WEEE man is made up of all the electronic waste that one typical UK person generates in a lifetime, from fridges to stereos to stove-tops. Created to illustrate and communicate the purposes of the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Products Directive, the WEEE man first appeared along the Thames in London in 2006, and was supported by Canon Europe. A fabulous visualisation feat, the WEEE man is an excellent example of the power of art to communicate the impacts of individual consumer choices, and generate support for legislation to address the need to recycle.
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.
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.
Lyndal Jones: Art, Place and Climate Change
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.