Key Pages
ProjectsChanges [May 08, 2008]
CULTURES OF CLIMATE...
Francesca's map of the world
I could easily detect Rome, Sardinia, Italy, Germany and England (all places she has been to or belongs to culturally) but couldn't make sense of the colours, so I asked her what the red, white, blue, orange, pink and black were. She answered: 'White is for the melting ice, blue is for the floods because of the melting ice, red is for the fires, black is for the ashes left after the fire, pink, yellow and orange are for the flowers and green is for the forests.'
I found it extraordinary that this was her world - not the one she feared might come true but the one she knew she was in.
CULTURES OF CLIMATE CHANGE is a study of the role of climate change in our imaginary, art, language and society.
According to 'Tipping Point or Turning Point', a report written by Phil Downig and Joe Ballantyne published by Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute in 2007 (available from www.ipsos-mori.com),
88% people now believe that the climate is changing
82% are very concerned about it
only 46% of people recognise that this is the result of human activity
but 70% believe that if there is no change the world will experience a major environmental crisis and 45% think that it's the greatest threat facing the world today
63% want to have more information about it and 59% find it difficult to work out what products are best for the society and the environment
78% of people are willing to change their behavior - but do they know how?
Although scientists are now in agreement that the climate is changing and the public, though, not necessarily the media, believe that this is true and are able to recall personal experiences that document such change (see some of the websites listed beneath) there still seems to be a discrepancy between knowledge and action.
Partly, this is the result of the dichotomies and contradictions that define the subject: climate change refers to an apocalyptic, tragic scenario of global scale whose solutions are often identified as local, primarily at the level of individual or familiar consumption
The report concludes: 'the debate appears to be more about which kinds and what level of information is needed to help facilitate, if not trigger, behaviour change.' (41)
This suggests that the big questions about climate change currently are:
How can climate change be brought into the sphere of the individual?
What type of information is necessary to trigger change?
How can local action be co-ordinated so as to acquire global significance and impact?
How can we deal with the uncertainty?
How can climate change be mediated so that it will effect behavioural change on a mass scale?
How can these new languages and vocabularies of climate change become more effective?
What are the analytical and documentation tools necessary to understand the growing importance of climate change cultures?
How can the scales of climate change (temporal and spatial) be mediated and communicated?
Within this context it is crucial to remember that:
Climate change is an ethical issue.
Climate change is about rights.
Climate change is likely to lead to a new industrial revolution.
It is time to encourage others into positive action. We are all responsible.
Roger Malina
See also Lovely Weather | Asking what the Arts can do for the Sciences [link]
CENTRES, INSTITUTES and NETWORKS for RESEARCH into CLIMATE CHANGE
IPPC [link]
Climate Change Issues [link]
Defra [link]
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research [link]
Social, Physical and Environmental Impacts of Climate Change [link]
The Environmental Change Institute [link]
LSE Centre for Environment [link]
Tyndall Centre [link]
UCIP UK Climate Impact Programme [link]
UK Universities Global Atmospheric Modelling Programme [link]
California Climate Change Center [link]
Carbonfund.org [link]
Center for the Study of Global Change [link]
Climate Prediction Center [link]
CO2Science [link]
MIT Center for Global Change Science Climate Modelling Initiative [link]
Pew Center on Global Climate Change [link]
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization | Climate Change [link]
Canadian Institute for Climate Studies [link]
100 Top Climate Change Sites [link]
SITES OF INTEREST TO CLIMATE CHANGE
An Inconvenient Truth - the Al Gore film, including advice on action [link]
AVAAZ.ORG [link]
BBC Climate Change [link], [link] and game [link]
Breathing Earth [link]
Carbon Calculator [link]
Carbon Footprint [link]
The Carbon Neutral Company [link]
Carbon Planet [link]
CH4.org.uk [link] RSS feed [link]
Climate Arc [link]
Climate Clock [link]
Climate Exchange [link]
Climezine.com [link]
Energy Saving Trust [link]
Envirolink [link]
Friends of the Earth [link]
Greenmuseum [link]
Heat and the Heartbeat of the City | climate change and New York city [link]
MET OFFICE [link]
New Climates [link]
New Scientist Environment [link]
OneClimate.net [link]
Safe Climate [link]
Transition Towns [link]
Two Countries one Forest [link]
Web 2.0 for development [link] see also Carlo Buontempo and Michael Saunby on what web 2.0 can do for climate change [link] see also wepoco [link]
World Changing Change Your Thinking [link]
WWF Climate Change [link] which includes a climate change game and a blog [link]
WWF Italia is collecting testimonies of climate change at [link]
hydroponic agriculture [link] and www.hidroponia.org.mx
PROJECTS INVOLVING RESEARCH ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Climate Prediction Net [link]
Equator | The urban pollution monitoring project [link]
Make me Sustainable [link]
Participate [link]
Arc Theatre for Change [link]
No impact man [link]
The Greening of Hedgerley Wood [link] and [link]
ART ORGANISATIONS or EXHIBITIONS WORKING ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Artcircolo [link]
Cape Farewell [link]
Climate Change: Cultural Change [link]
Global Warming and Art [link]
Nature 2.0 [link]
TippingPoint [link] + images from TippingPoint 2007
Translocal.org [link]
[link]
Whale bones, aluminium, potassium, salt (2005-6)
'This artwork makes no easy concession to a quick sound bite about climate change. We were drawn to working with the skeleton of a whale after seeing beaches in the High Arctic littered with thousands of bones. Whales were hunted for centuries for their oil, for heating and lighting in the industrialising world prior to the discovery of petroleum. Some species of whales were eradicated completely and many are now endangered by changes in sea temperature and ocean currents, noise pollution and hunting.
Working closely with the Cetacean Stranding Programme at the Natural History Museum in London, we removed the skeleton from a minke whale washed up in Skegness, Lincolnshire, on the UK’s east coast. We cleaned the bones and then immersed them one by one in a highly saturated alum solution, encrusting the skeleton with a chemical growth of ice-like crystals.
As the work progressed so did our understanding of how the ocean absorbs vast quantities of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuel and how in the last two hundred years the chemistry of the ocean has changed for the first time in millions of years. The seawater is turning sour and many marine creatures are struggling to make shells. Ocean acidification is affecting corals, molluscs and tiny zooplankton, the major food source of many marine animals, including whales. It is now accepted that if we continue unabated in our consumption of fossil fuel, the acidity of the oceans will increase incrementally and the life they support will perish.' [link]
[link]
Mel 2005
Alstad is a Toronto based artist, curator and graphic designer. He is co-founder of Year Zero One, a net.art gallery and electronic art forum, and the Symbiosis Collective a group of multidisciplinary artists whose 4 site specific occupations took place in vacant buildings in Toronto from 1992 - 1997. His work has been featured in exhibitions, projects and festivals in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London, Berlin and Graz, Austria. He is dedicated to autonomous methods of direct artist /audience communication via electronic network, site-specific installations and public art interventions.
biographical information [link]
Brandon Ballengée collecting amphibians, 2001
Exploring the boundaries between art, science and technology, Ballengée creates multidisciplinary works out of information generated from ecological field trips and laboratory research. Since 1996, he has collaborated with numerous scientists to conduct primary biological research and advanced imaging procedures. These activities were outlined in "Ecoventions", a book published in 2002 by the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati.
'The term ecovention describes an artist-initiated project that employs an inventive strategy to intervene in or transform a local ecology. Ecoventions usually involve collaborations between artists, community members and local specialists such as ecologists, botanists, landscape architects or urban planners. This day will be of particular interest to artists wishing to develop their ecological-art practice and ecologists interested in working with artists to raise awareness of ecological issues.' [link]
Artist and author of theories of technoromanticism and earth art.
corpo@corpo, an artwork by MMS, SMS, email and digital photograph (Venice Biennale 2005).
For more information see: [link], [link], [link] and [link]
BridA are based in Slovenia and are currently developing projects that research the transmission of information and application of nanotechnology research to the artistic process.
The BridA Art Collective from Šempas, the Art Gallery Mestna Galerija Nova Gorica and SGP Gorica d.d., in collaboration with the Hoxton Square Gallery (London, UK), have organized ART FOR NOTHING, which took place in the Square Bevkov trg in Nova Gorica on Saturday, 29 September 2007, 11 am.
ART FOR NOTHING is the second in a series of events that the Hoxton Square Gallery is planning to put in place throughout Europe. The first of these events was held in London in June of 2007.
'Artists including Kate Buckley, Kirsty Harris, Mark Jason Kemp, Jonny Reding, Lawrence Taylor and the BridA Art Collective from Slovenia have been invited to display their work on the railings and in the park in Hoxton Square and give it away for free. Members of the public are invited to come along and will be given vouchers to acquire the work on display and being created specially on the night. If demand for one work is high, vouchers will be drawn from hat to decide who gets to take the work away.' (from the artist website)
In MODUX, developed in collaboration with a team of scientists at the University of Maine, they researched into the use of different kinds of scientifically collected data and measurements and used data samples from ice-score drillings in the Antarctica.
The artist website described the projec tas follows: 'Modux is a project of sampling ideas, matter and sorroundings using scientific sistems to form autonomous modular cells – moduls and reinterpretated visual composition with the acquired moduls or modular composition. In this experiment we gather the informations that belong to a moment or space and can be stored in a permanent form. These can be in the form of a sketch, fotograph, sound, temperature, air pressure or infact a combination of given data we perceive. We codify the gathered information or samples into a senseful cell, to which the neccessary catalyst for further elaboration and enable cell linking is added. Elaborated cell becomes a modul ready for use. The sense of trasforming of gathered information into codified notes or moduls is the research of new idiomatic expressions. The sources, that would generaly be used to form an artwork,are mathematicaly converted into scetches which are not dependant of our temporary perception and instead are a standardized copy of a chosen source.'
For more information see [link]
[link]
David Buckland is a designer, artist and film-maker whose works have been exhibited in numerous galleries in London, Paris and New York and collected by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum, New York and the Getty Collection, Los Angeles amongst others.
David Buckland, End of Ice, 2006, (detail)
'The Energy Harvesting Dérive turns the popular Heelys roller sneaker into a platform for generating electricity from human motion.
Electricity harvested from rolling powers a microcomputer and lcd display embedded on the shoe to deliver random directions for a pedestrian to follow. Arrows and text show up on the screen display telling the wearer which direction she should travel next -- North, Northeast, Southwest, etc.
Depending on the speed of rolling, directions appears on the screen every 15 to 20 feet. They invite the wearer to follow a random zig-zaggy path that mimics in physical space the mathematical simulation of the random or drunkard's walk. The design motivation behind the sneakers' functionality is also informed by the Situationist practice of the dérive.
The addition of locative technologies such as GPS is feasible, but the intention of these shoes is rather to incite their users to get lost and explore territory outside of their typical transport routines. The shoes force their owner to make choices about whether or not to challenge urban obstacles or interrupt automobile traffic when instructed to move in seemingly hard to traverse directions. Participating in an Energy Harvesting Dérive thus fosters an exploration of the city and its flows. It reveals the impacts of urban planning decisions and encourages users to act out and playfully brainstorm alternative modes of transport and energy.
Besides, The Energy Harvesting Dérive, developed by Christian Croft & Kate Hartman, hopes to promote discussion in the realm of sustainable energy development and alternative transportation design.'
from [link]
[link] | CAE Defence Fund [link] Strange Culture [link]
Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of five tactical media artists dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, critical theory, and political activism.
Cult of the New Eve
For an article on CAE see 
ctr_article2.pdf
'I realised the solar power plant in September 2004 and it was financed, for the most part, from the profits of my former projects like my Kiosk, my Trailer Rental or my Free Range Chicken Egg Production. These projects have in common, besides other features, that their complete profit was re-invested. This power plant produces electricity, which is sold to the local electricity provider in accordance with the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz in order to be offered to the consumers as regenerative energy. The photovoltaic system is planned to operate for the next 25 years. After eight years, the initial investment will be repaid.' (from artist website)
http://www.dirkfleischmann.net/Dirk%20Fleischmann%20english/my%20Solar%20Power%20Plant.html
artist website [link]
'Le temps se dilate, le soleil ne disparaît jamais, les élèments se dominent les uns et les autres, du solide au liquide, du liquide au gazeux, du minéral à l'organique.... Tous ces équilibres dynamiques, à la fin de l'hiver, vous dévoilent des veines minérales sous les oripeaux d'un linceul blanc sali. Le sol humide et spongieux, vous expose une vie oubliée, faite de végétaux du carbonifère. Malgré ces réminescences, vous tombez sur des traces humaines faites de douleurs et de disparitions: celle des chasseurs, trappeurs, marins audacieux, mineurs et bien d'autres... Le silence revient toujours, étouffant votre écho et vous apportant la paix. Comme le disait Albert 1er, le Spitzberg semble bien être l'endroit de la douce mort et du sommeil éternel.'
Cited above, beneath one of her images, is a text from the artist's blog of a polar expedition done for the IPY international polar year with the French polar institute IPEV, sponsored by Nikon, Analix forever gallery, Paula Prod, Espace d'art concret Honegger Albers donation: the artist spent one month from May 13 to June 12 2007 at the Rabot station in Ny Alesund 79.55° N 12.35 E in the North Pole area and produced site specific performance and art work. On June 7 and 8th 2007, she did 2 performances through skype at the Venezia Biennale (Venezuelian pavillon, Exploratorium V0.2 a project by Elohim Feria and Françoise Vincent). For more information see [link] and [link]
US artist who performed a piece addressing climate change as part of Nicaragua's International Theater Festival, "More Malaria! More Dengue! Climate Change: Always the Worst" (2007).
Jessica Hirst describes this piece as follows:
'The piece consisted of three parts.
The first involved passing out the attached questions, or Preguntas. The questions range from 'Where does your garbage go?' to 'What is the connection between concrete in China and Hurricane Felix?'. The questions were printed on the same rolls of paper used in cash registers, and were distributed as receipts for theater tickets.
The second part was a sort of altar made from the hood of a car, on which we placed an enormous block of ice, which of course melted throughout the evening. A colleague and I performed an interaction with the ice that began with caresses and ended with full-scale destruction with spraypaint and hammers. This made an immediate physical connection between industry and the destruction of nature.
Later began an 'advertising campaign' for Climate Change as a product. I altered promotional phraseology used here in print media to make a series of 'etiquetas,' or labels, which were then affixed to transparent plastic cups filled with a cocktail of sand and stone. These were then served to the audience. I attached here 'Climate Change will Run You Over,' the one with the Hummer and the horsecart. These carts are common on the streets and highways of Managua alongside the SUVs of the rich.'
'Above is a version made for a t-shirt in the US. The front is the Hummer/Bummer, the back is 'Climate Change is a Bummer'. I'm interested in subverting the language and imagery of advertising in an exploration of how to communicate information about climate change. Here (in Nicaragua) people already have some of the awful effects expected, in terms of natural disasters, but there is very little awareness that it is all connected to a phenomena caused by humans.'
[link]
'Use your mobile phone and listen to the sound of the melting glacier in real-time
Call 00498937914058 and you will be connected directly with the Vernagt Glacier'
an installation by Kalle Laar developed in collaboration with Artcircolo and Vodafone R&D (Germany) with the help of the Commission for Glaciology of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, exhibited at 52, Venice Art Biennal and Ars Electronica, Linz
(abstract from the artist website [link])
TELEPHONE - SOUND - COMMUNICATIONS
'Use your mobile phone and listen to the sound of the melting glacier in real-time
Using the phone has become so prevalent in our society that we no longer consciously perceive the cosmos of sounds emanating from our global communications network. As with so many other sources, we have lost touch with qualities inherent in these acoustic artefacts and the sensations they can evoke.
Pictures and images are spatially displaced representations of reality - before they can touch us emotionally, an intrinsic distance must be overcome. But sound knows no such barriers. It is immediate, It is unavoidable. It touches us directly.
A MOBILE ELEGY
A Mobile Elegy is a direct mobile phone connection to a glacier. A microphone in the heart of the glacier picks up it’s voice and transmits it to the caller.
You listen the to sounds of water, occasional cracking and other utterances made living glaciers as they grow and recede in perpetual seasonal flux. The world has come to the awareness that global warming is real and that the ensuing climate change will affect us all. Our planet’s glaciers are a powerful and dramatic symbol for this process. They are like giant living creatures that are slowly dying - melting, leaking and waning into ultimate oblivion.
A Mobile Elegy invites you to connect.
Obviously the glacier will not respond by talking to you nor will it give you any other sign of individual communication. But once you pick up your mobile phone and dial the glacier you will be right there - in real time, any time, from anywhere in the world.
This is all about the emotional qualities of sound. You will be affected by the simple sounds of the glacier melting away, by being there.
Mobile Elegy will be extended to other glaciers in the Alps, the Pyrenees and other sites worldwide.'
Reviews of the piece are at DIE ZEIT.pdf and Vernagtferner_L_Braun.pdf and more information about the glacier can be found at [link] while a visualisation of the future of the glacier is at [link]
While Calling the Glacier was exhibited in Venice, the Guardian run a feature on a similar work developed by Katie Paterson [link]
The Guardian reports:
'The visible tip of the project in Britain is her neon sign in the Slade gallery, London, part of her degree show, which gives the mobile number 07758 225698, from which anyone can call and make direct contact with the polar icecap, and Vatnajokull, the largest though rapidly eroding glacier in Europe.
This lagoon is a graveyard of glaciers," Paterson said yesterday, from her tent by the water. "In a way there is something heartbreaking about this, knowing that you are listening to something magnificent being destroyed - but it is also very beautiful, a celebration of nature.'
for more info see also [link]
SGM-Iceberg-Probe
Agnes Meyer-Brandis, born in 1973, first studied Mineralogy at the RWTH Aachen. After one year she transferred to the Art Academy Maastricht, Netherlands to study Sculpture. From 1996 to 2000 she belonged to in the master class at the Art Academy Düsseldorf. After a working stay in New York she attended the Academy of Media Arts Köln from 2001 to 2003. She was awarded to various scholarships and prizes, e.g.: 2003 nomination "Korallenriff-Detektor", International Media Art Award, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe; 2003 Honorary Mention "Bohrkernlabor und Elfen-Scan", Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; 2005 scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW Nachwuchsförderung. Numerous single and group exhibitions: 2004 "Transmitter", emaf - European Media Art Festival, Kunsthalle Osnabrück; 2004 BEAP - Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth, Australia; 2005 Kunstraum Aarau, Schweiz; Kunstraum Düsseldorf; Gallery Kapelica, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Field Test Porto Alegre of SGM-Iceberg-Probe
She has exhibited in Brazil, Switzerland, Slovenija, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Japan, Australia and France.
Coral-Reef-Detector
Artist website [link]
Interview by We Make Money Not Art at [link]
Strange Weather, a collaboration with the Studio for Urban Projects. [link]
Strange Weather is an interactive visualisation that graphs the usage patterns of terms that characterise the dialogue around climate change. Drawing from both historical and contemporary uses on the internet, Strange Weather allows us to see the construction of the populist debate that shapes 'eco politics'. The project won the Eco-Visualisation Challenge and is currently exhibited at Eyebeam in NY.
'Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities' developed with the Geomatics department UCL, London 21 and Planning Aid for London. More info [link]
Artist website: [link]
[link]
Born 1969 in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, Peljhan graduated from the Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. In 1992 he founded the arts organization 'Projekt Atol' and in 1995 Project Atol`s technological branch 'Pact Systems' (Projekt Atol Communication Technologies) in the frame of which he carries out research in the fields of performance, technology applications, radio, sound, video, film, lectures and situations. In 1995 Peljhan co-founded 'Ljudmila' (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab see [link]) for which he works as programs co-ordinator. Peljhan is also the operations coordinator of the 'Makrolab' project, which was shown at the Documenta X in Kassel. One of his recent projects is 'Insular Technologies' (International Networking System for Universal Long Distance Advanced Radio). Peljhan has co-edited and authored art and performance oriented publications and articles. He has exhibited in Slovenia, France, the US, Poland, Austria, Australia, Germany, and South Africa.
Makrolab, Rottnest Island, 2000, photo documentation
For the artist's Cv see [link]
Andrea Polli is a leading artist working at the intersection of art and science. She is also MFA Director and Associate Professor of Integrated Media Arts at The Department of Film and Media, Hunter College. She has developed a number of works in relation to climate change. Her storm sonifications are at [link]. The North Pole real-time weather sonification/visualization is at [link]. For mor einformation on Urban wind power see [link] and on Air quality see [link]
In 2007 she headed to the Antarctic and this is her (in progress) address for that work [link]
See also New Climates [link]
Andrea Polli, "Airlight Taipei", video still from sound and video installation, Taipei Artist Village, Taiwan, 2006.
'She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate information through sound (a process called sonification). Recent collaborations include: Atmospherics/Weather Works, a spatialized sonification of highly detailed models of storms that devastated the New York area; Heat and the Heartbeat of the City, a series of sonifications of actual and projected climate in Central Park, the heart of New York City and one of the world’s first locations for climate monitoring; and N., a real-time multi-channel sonification and visualization of weather in the Arctic. For this and related work, she has been recognized by the UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2003 and has presented work in the 2004 Ogaki Biennale in Gifu, Japan and at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, Switzerland. Her work in this area has also been presented at Cybersonica at the ICA in London and awarded funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Greenwall Foundation.' (artist website)
Andrea Polli interviews IPCC author Dr. Andreas Fischlin [link]
Andrea Polli's website is at [link]
Icelandic artist who has exhibited in Denmark, Italy, France, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, the United States, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, China, Sweden and Iceland. Rúrí works as a performance artist and creates installations which perform the ethics of the human encounter with nature. Particularly well known is her Endangered Waters series which was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2003.
Rúrí - Flooding
In this audiovisual work Rúrí documents how 'industrial interests are bringing about the flooding of an unique highland ecosystem in her country and causing its unalterable destruction'. The installation alternates a showing of the waterfall Toefrafoss with a collage of the lives of some bird families whose nests are destroyed by the rising waters of the reservoir built to power an aluminium smelter. The installation alternates a visual narrative with aesthetically charged images of the disappearing waterfall so as to produce an interesting contrast between the local and global concerns at stake in climate change culture.
See artist website at [link]
a small group of prankster-activists led by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, ‘interpreted’ by ®™ark’s Jacques Servin (who intervened into the Sims computer game) ad Igor Vamos, both also responsible for much ®™ark activity, they take on what they perceive to be corrupt corporations and institutions by impersonating them, through a process of ‘identity correction’ (The Yes Men, 2005), at conferences, on the web, and even on television.
Projects on climate change are DOW [link] and Exon's Climate-Victim Candles [link]
Artist website [link]
