climate – Sensing Our World

GhostFood

Title: GhostFood
Artist(s): Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Taste
Issue(s): Food loss due to climate change

This piece explores the loss of biodiversity due to climate change, but in the form of smell and taste of foods threatened by climate change. The artists therefore created a performance piece, whereby they installed their work in a food truck that ‘served’ taste experiences of flavours that may be threatened by climate change, such as cod, peanuts and cocoa. The users ordered from a menu of food they would like to taste. However, what is presented to the client is not the food itself, but a device that directly stimulates the olfactory (taste) sense, giving the impression of experiencing the food. The device is worn on the face, and directs smells into the nose. This olfactory experience is supplemented by a ‘climate resilient textural substitute that will mimic the texture’ of the soon to be unavailable food.¹ It is known that the sense of smell influences how food is tasted. Therefore, by designing these devices as a thought experiment, the authors are making ‘smelly’ and ‘tasty’ the effects of climate change, while asking the audience to consider their visceral response to these substitute materials.

What is unusual about this project is that it invokes ‘olfactory memory’ ² to evoke visceral responses to climate change. This also evokes a sense of attachment to food, and the relative disgust at eating synthetic substitutes of food that no longer exists. Thus, the project reveals that not only can environmental issues be visibilised and sonified, but made olfactory also.

Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible

Title: Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible
Artist(s): Marcus Maeder
Source: NEURAL
Sense(s): Sound, Installation
Issue(s): Environmental impact of climate change

This research project by Marcus Maeder seeks to render audible certain processes of trees and forests. Maeder recorded various sounds of trees using scientific measurement tools (Neural). He then presented the work in spatial audio installations, where the speakers playing the sounds are ‘suspended in the shape of a cube formed by 9 columns of 4 speakers each. Using virtual imaging techniques field recordings of climate conditions are projected outside of the boundaries of the installation, while recordings of the acoustic emissions of trees are reproduced within the installation on individual speaker columns’ (Neural). In addition, the environment in which the installation is playing, is fed by environmental data from the trees/forest, such as temperature affecting the loudness of the installation.

Thus, the installation provides a complex sonic landscape from both outside and within the forest installation. However, in creating a feedback loop from within the forest installation that affects the sounds itself, it echoes the feedback loops created by society upon nature. It is therefore relevant for this project. Indeed, ‘the combination of both recognizable and previously unheard sounds create a sonic representation of natural processes, attempting to convey the complexity of specific ecological systems through correlations between processed environmental data and recordings of acoustic phenomena’ (Neural).

Weather Thingy

Title: Weather Thingy
Artist(s): Adrien Kaeser
Source: Creative Applications
Sense(s): sound, installation
Issue(s): weather data, climate change

This piece offers a form of algorithmic composition by attaching environmental sensors to a keyboard synthesiser. The environmental sensors measure rain, wind speed, and wind direction. This data is converted into MIDI signals, which are used to trigger various sounds. In this way, the artist ‘was particularly interested in being able to use the controller in Live [computer software], so that the listeners can feel (in real time) the impact of the climate on the composition’. ¹ Therefore, while the artist maintains control over the sounds being played, the artist and audience alike are aware that the sensors, and thus the weather, are also influencing what is sounded.

Climoji

Title: Climoji
Artist(s): Viniyata Pany, Marina Zurkow and Manuja Waldia
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): visual, tactile/haptic (texting)
Issue(s): communicating climate change

While not visibilising environmental data, this conceptual project, which designs a set of emoji pertinent to the issue of climate change, is an example of visibilising the entirety of the climate issue. Furthermore, if actualised through acceptance by the Unicode Consortium, which decides on new emoji ¹, it potentially empowers publics affected by climate change in a vernacular way, and allows those affected by, for example, extreme weather events, to communicate these issues. For that reason, it is an important work to include.

The work ‘is meant to put the climate change discourse at the centre of our personal and public communication, infiltrating one of the most used media’. ² The emoji have been released as a poster, and as a sticker pack.