Panel Statement

Chair Per­sons: Tom Corby & An­drea Polli
Pre­sen­ters: An­nick Bu­reaud, Nathan Cun­ning­ham & An­dreas Fis­chlin

In re­cent years the sci­ence and data of cli­mate sci­ence has come under un­prece­dented pub­lic scrutiny. This politi­ciza­tion of cli­mate data, whilst po­ten­tially dan­ger­ous, of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties for us to re-think our re­la­tion­ships to sci­ence and de­velop dis­cus­sion around in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary art/sci­ence ap­proaches to our chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment. In this spirit the panel will ex­plore how cli­mate data op­er­ates as a so­cial and cul­tural phe­nom­e­non with cre­ative af­for­dances be­yond nor­ma­tive sci­en­tific and in­sti­tu­tional frames and prac­tices. Panel mem­bers from artis­tic and sci­en­tific com­mu­ni­ties will pre­sent col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects, the­o­ret­i­cal elab­o­ra­tions and vi­sual and sonic ex­per­i­men­ta­tions that ex­plore the fol­low­ing ques­tions: What data dri­ven ap­proaches to rep­re­sent­ing cli­mate change in the arts exist; what are the fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties?

1. What method­olog­i­cal and con­cep­tual chal­lenges do art/sci­ence col­lab­o­ra­tors using cli­mate data con­front?
2. Are ex­ist­ing mod­els of col­lab­o­ra­tion use­ful?
3. How might artists nav­i­gate the op­por­tu­ni­ties and dan­gers faced by the use of cli­mate data?
4. What is the proper role of such work in the pub­lic dis­courses of cli­mate change?
   
   

• Tom Corby is the project Research Fellow and the deputy Director of CREAM,  the Centre
  for Research in Art and Media at the University of Westminster, UK. His research explores how artists and designers can employ digital information as an expressive medium. He studied Fine Art at Middlesex University and has a PhD from Chelsea College of Art & Design.
• An­drea Polli is a dig­i­tal media artist liv­ing in New Mex­ico (USA) and As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in Fine Arts and En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico where she holds the Mesa Del Sol En­dowed Chair of Dig­i­tal Media at the Uni­ver­sity. Her work ad­dresses is­sues re­lated to sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy in con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety. She is in­ter­ested in global sys­tems, the real time in­ter­con­nec­tiv­ity of these sys­tems, and the ef­fect of these sys­tems on in­di­vid­u­als. Polli’s work with sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy and media has been pre­sented widely in over 100 pre­sen­ta­tions, ex­hi­bi­tions and per­for­mances in­ter­na­tion­ally and has been rec­og­nized by nu­mer­ous grants, res­i­den­cies and awards from var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions in­clud­ing UN­ESCO. Her work has been re­viewed by the Los An­ge­les Times, Art in Amer­ica, Art News, NY Arts and oth­ers. She has pub­lished two book chap­ters, sev­eral audio CDs, DVDs and many pa­pers in print in­clud­ing in both MIT Press and Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press jour­nals. She cur­rently works in col­lab­o­ra­tion with at­mos­pheric sci­en­tists to de­velop sys­tems for un­der­stand­ing storm and cli­mate through sound (called soni­fi­ca­tion). Re­cent pro­jects in­clude: a spa­tial­ized soni­fi­ca­tion of highly de­tailed mod­els of storms that dev­as­tated the New York area, a se­ries of soni­fi­ca­tions of cli­mate in Cen­tral Park and a real-time multi-chan­nel soni­fi­ca­tion and vi­su­al­iza­tion of weather in the Arc­tic. She has ex­hib­ited, per­formed, and lec­tured na­tion­ally and in­ter­na­tion­ally and re­cently spent seven weeks in Antarc­tica on a Na­tional Sci­ence Foun­da­tion funded pro­ject.