Written by Tim Terpstra on 12:53
Exhibition ecoAesthetics The Hague:
Monitoring Ecological Data and Patterns of Human Consumption
Opening: Saturday 22 March, 17:00
Expo Dates: Saturday 22 March – Friday 02 May
Opening times: Wednesday to Saturday 12 to 17hrs
Location: <>TAG Headquarters Map
Stille Veerkade 19 / 2512 BE / Den Haag
Statement by the curators on ecoAesthetics
Following the success of <>TAG’s September ‘07 Information Aesthetics exhibition and symposium, featuring work of different artists dealing with information visualization and generative art, <>TAG continues this path with an extended program on ecoAesthetics.
<>TAG presents work of artists dealing with visualization and sonification of ecology in a set of exhibitions and a related symposium with lectures, workshops, concerts and a city walk.
Synopsis
The ecoAesthetics programme challenges visitors to consider massive eco-related issues in different and inspiring ways. The work on display shows alternatives and solutions fusing visionary art and technology
How can artists translate everyday information visually or sonically? What are innovative artists and designers doing to promote conservation of resources using innovative technology and creative thinking? How can art make us more aware of the kilowatts we consume or the carbon we emit? Can artists significantly inspire observers to be more environmentally sensitive by giving information a particular form or sound? Furthermore, can art increase our ability to analyze and relate spiritually and emotionally to the natural world we live in?
Work on display
The ecoAesthetics programme compiles the recent work of artists and designers that visualizes either ecological data or consumption patterns in an effort to raise awareness about environmental pollution and climate change. All featured artists have a different and unique approach and aesthetics.
Lucid Design’s functional website, Dashboard, quantifies electricity consumption via clean, clear graphics. Tiffany Holmes’ World Offset displays global energy usage as a series of spinning disks of kilowatt-guzzling devices: toasters, computers, light bulbs, and fax machines.
Both Lucid Design and Holmes hope that real time information can inspire the viewer to consume less power. Beatriz da Costa’s installation Pigeon Blog is decidedly more extreme in its presentation. Here, the artist creates an outdoor spectacle to call attention to the familiar problem of air pollution: a pigeon wears a backpack with a hacked cell phone to transmit data about nitro oxide concentrations to a blog.
Monitoring Ecological Data
Eco-visualizations are artworks that reinterpret environmental data with custom software to increase public understanding and promote responsibility.
Mathematicians like Martin Wattenberg define new territory in the area of information visualization by producing “new visualizations to let people understand their data*.” Wattenberg’s term ‘social data exploration’ recalls Joseph Beuys’ term ‘social sculpture’ which was coined in the 1970's to refer to creative acts that engage with the community and respond to the world.
Eco-visualization functions as a kind of Beuysian data exchange that promotes environmental education at a particular site by making local ecological data vividly available.
The <>TAG exhibition features ecoviz artists like Michael Mandiberg who created a Firefox plug-in called RealCosts, calculating one’s own carbon loads through daily driving routes.
Static, a Swedish design collective, creates household devices like the FlowerLamp that ‘blooms’ only when electricity loads are low. DiyKyoto’s Wattson is a real-time energy monitor that looks like a sleek clock radio; users can choose to have electricity consumption data presented via colours, kilowatts, or currency.
The diverse and emerging field of eco-visualization has the potential to provide new strategies to increase our ability to conserve valuable resources like electricity and water. Yolande Harris uses technology in her work as the means to understand the electronically extended spaces we inhabit.
Patterns of Human Consumption
The <>TAG exhibition features works by artists who highlight the ironies inherent in human consumption patterns around the world.
Artist Scott Amron creates plug-in flowerpots to effectively ‘block’ the usage of an electrical outlet.
Tiffany Holmes uses images of nature clipped from bottled water Green-Fad-and-the-Economy Nov-07 labels to generate quirky landscapes that call attention to the absurdity of drinking expensive imported water in countries that have high quality tap water.
Brooke Singer’s website, Superfund 365, reminds us of our polluting ways by profiling a man-made toxic catastrophe once a day for a year.
Artist Juriaan Booij visited Tuvalu, one of the smallest and most remote countries on the planet, to visualize the effects of sea-level shifts. His book and documentary, The Sinking of Tuvalu sketches the island residents’ reactions to their grim future: the disappearance of their country due to rising seas.
What the World Eats, a Time Magazine photo essay, depicts consumption in easy-to-understand visuals. Families around the world are shown with a week’s worth of food consumption. The images and objects presented in this section of the exhibition are intended to raise awareness of the massive number of resources consumed on a daily basis.
Tiffany Holmes, Hicham Khalidi
* Martin Wattenberg, “Introduction to Visualization, From Data to Pictures to Insight (2005),”
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