Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Arrhenius first wrote about the impact of increasing CO2 on global climate in
1896, and yet at the highest level of government the issue was still argued until recently.
Somehow the ambitious enlightenment projects of the Renaissance and the Scientific
Revolution are incomplete. Most scientific knowledge is not culturally appropriated. In
many ways science has become a “cargo cult’. Many people use the cell phone for daily
survival, but could not explain the difference between a photon and an electron.
Micro-Science
A second reason for this disconnect of modern science and public understanding,
is that science is carried out mostly in guarded (mostly male) monasteries. This
institutional isolation of science is a historical accident of its development, particularly
because of its close connection to government and industry in wartime. But there are
signs that kinds of “micro science’ are developing, a new form people’s science that is
made possible by the internet and the new public access to scientific data and
instruments. Science producing communities have ownership over the knowledge they
help generate, and this knowledge is locally rooted and meaningful. To coin a phrase,
Micro Science is to the National Science Foundation what Micro-Credit is to the World
Bank. I am not calling for a renewal of amateur science, but rather embedding mediated
contact with the world in everyday life. The work of technological artists is part of this
movement.
Landscape Artists
We know what a landscape artist is, and indeed landscape artists over several
hundred years have helped shape our cultural imaginaries of the relationship between
humans and nature. A key transformation brought about by Renaissance artists and
scientists was the re-contextualizing of humans within the natural world, as well as the
relationships of individuals to their societies. When Paul Cezanne painted and re-painted
the scenery of Provence he developed a visual vocabulary and artistic stance that has
influenced art making for a hundred years. When Claude Monet or Vincent Van Gogh
laid the groundwork for new ways of representing the world, it was not at all obvious at
the time what the impact of their new way of seeing would be; thousands of landscape
artists work today in their traditions.
Today artists like Marko Peljham with his Makrolab create new kinds of artist’s
studios that make sensory connection to the data environment; the artist claims as his
territory the ‘landscape’ accessible only through scientific and technical instruments.
Beatriz da Costa with her “Pigeon Blog” engages pigeon racing communities in
collecting environmental data for art purposes; the data about pollution levels is collected
and made ‘sensible’ not only as abstract data but also embedded within a particular social
community.
Andrea Polli works in urban environments making visible local micro climates. In
her work “Heat and the Heartbeat” she sonifies small changes in ambient temperature and
projects future climate change .
Sabine Raff monitors oxygen levels and translates them through an art making
robot that draws on the walls of the gallery.. Her art making instrument takes data about
the world and converts it into ‘visualisations’ that are the equivalent of the process used
by landscape artists, but using a ‘mediated” sense data.
New Zealand artist Janine Randerson, in her work Remote Senses, takes data
collected from orbiting satellites, Chinese and American, to project visualizations of
meterological data, converting the global large scale information to local meaning.
Katherine Moriwaki with her “Inside Outside Handbag” and other artists working
with smart textiles, create clothing and objects that respond so ambient environmental
data. If we were as sensitive to methane and carbon dioxide as we are to heat and light,
we could not ignore the changes in our air.
We do not know yet what kind of art making will best help us transform our
cultural relationship to climate, but I believe it will involve artists work taking scientific
data with instruments but for artistic purposes.
The Leonardo “Lovely Weather” working group (1) has been discussing and
documenting the work of artists involved today in work connected to climate change. A
number of texts have been published in the Leonardo publications and web sites (2). Our
current call for texts “Environment 2.0” has been organized by Drew Hemment and the
work will be connected to the Futuresonic conference (3). We are working with the
Letterkenny Art Center on artists residencies, teamed with scientists working in specific
places that are particularly sensitive to small changes in micro climate.
Over recent months a number of us have been developing the concept of “Open
Observatories’ which disseminate tools, techniques, data and knowledge for carrying out
projects in micro science, intimate science, peoples science and crowd sourcing (4).
These open observatories would allow small communities to develop locally generated
knowledge that can be the basis for local action to help these communities evolve rapidly
and respond to the changes that will be needed to confront climate change, breaking oil
dependency and sustainable development. Open observatories would include the work of
artists collecting data for cultural and artistic purposes as well as community leaders and
researchers seeking to find ways to mediate personally meaningful access to scientific
knowledge. Finally Open Observatories might become the locus for societal retroaction
on the direction and content of future science, and help establish a new social contract
between science and society. They might provide test beds for climate artists.
“Self-learning: Today’s learners are self-learners. They browse, scan, follow links in
mid-paragraph to related material. They look up information and follow new threads.
They create their own paths to understanding.
These ideas I think would serve as a good discussion point of how climate artists
can contribute to creating deep new sensualities about our relationship to the world. And
in particular we need to involve children before the age of 15, when their brain structure
has matured, to develop ways of understanding the world that is only accessible through
mediated senses. These will contribute to the “hard humanities” and how our society can
undergo the rapid cultural mutation needed to survive the coming centuries.
When Leonardo was founded 43 years ago, it was 7 years after Keeling and
colleagues started measuring CO2 levels in Mauna Loa. Climate artists over the next 43
years are on the front lines of the hard humanities.
Roger Malina
October 31, 2009. Marseille, France.
This text is a slightly modified version of an earlier version for Transmedialen 2009.
This version was prepared for the RETHINK Contemporary Art and Climate Change
Project, Nov 2009 : http://www.rethinkclimate.org/