Climate Symphony

I was invited to participate in Climate Symphony, an event devised by Disobedient in collaboration with Jamie Perera. It was co-produced by Forma Arts and Disobedient, and supported by Arts Council England and Sculpt the Future Foundation. The event was held at Culture Lab, Newcastle University. Climate Symphony was a live music performance that turned data into a four part symphony to tell the story of what climate change means for humans and their environment through sound.

Some questions we thought about included

Can we use sound as a narrative and reporting tool?

Can we engage and inspire and maintain factual rigour?

The lab brought together scientists, artists, journalists and members of the public to interrogate some of the ideas behind the project and as part of a workshop/lab, we created some initial works to communicate some of the data to a new and wider audience.

The lab was intended as a research and development vehicle to answer key practical and artistic questions around the process by which we can transform data into a narrative symphony.

Schedule

LEARN

Birth of a Climate Dataset: Artists, scientists and data analysts delivered talks on field recording and climate data collection.




Jim Lloyd gave an introduction to his work as a scientist and artist, and discussed some of the challenges he faces with science that led him to art.




Jez Riley French described his approach to field recording and shared some examples of his work.


PLAY

What is the Sound of a Dying Planet? We split into two groups and each group selected a set of climate data and turned that into sound.



This is the data set that we chose (kindly provided by Erin in our group).

We found the averages of points along the timeline and plotted this data into the computer. We used the trends to alter the recordings that Jez from our group had provided.

CHALLENGE

Each group explained the decisions made throughout the process of making the work, discussed the challenges faced, what worked, and what didn’t work. This led to a broader debate about role of sonification in communicating narratives of climate change.


Here is the presentation about the work that I was involved with making.

In the evening we were treated to two performances, one by Kate Carr and the next by Jez Riley French.

It was a really interesting and stimulating day, working with such a range of experts in their field and sharing lots of ideas and raising lots of questions. Thank you to Forma Arts and Disobedient for making it happen and for inviting me to be part of it.

The Science of Colour - Delivered by The Colour Group

On Thursday night I attended an event at Science Central called The Science of Colour. It was delivered by Colour Group (Great Britain), an interdisciplinary society, drawing together people interested in all aspects of colour – its perception, measurement, reproduction and artistic expression.

Dr Carinna Parraman from the Centre for Fine Print Research, spoke about her work with 2.5D printing at the University of the West of England, Bristol. 2.5D printing connects emerging interests in the technical, creative and physical approaches to practice. The process explores capturing, modelling and the application of textured marks that emulate the textured appearance of materials.

Valerie Bonnardel asked the question 'are the associations between words and colour arbitrary, or is there structure?'

She discussed colour as a sign:

There are 3 types of referential associations:

1. ICON - relation of (physical) similarity e.g. yellow = sun

2. INDEX - relation of contiguity (a series of things in continuous connection)

- signal - appears before the event e.g. dark sky gives warning of thunderstorm

- clue - remains after the event e.g. a handprint

- symptom - happens at the same time as the event e.g. leaves change colour as the seasons change

3. SYMBOLIC - relation of conventionality e.g. colours in flags

Dr Gabriele Jordan from the Colour Neuroscience Department at Newcastle University discussed her research into the superpower 'Tetrachromatic Colour Vision', answering the question "Is the red I see the same as the red you see?" by exploring psychophysics, gender differences and colour blindness.

Danny Garside ended the event with his presentation about how we make judgements about lighting. Colour and light are intrinsically linked, and both play a crucial role in how we perceive and 'enjoy' the places and spaces around us. 

What do we mean by 'good light'?

We judge the quality of light in two ways:

1. Based on usefulness - which is scene dependent e.g. is the lighting in a library suitable for reading?

2. Based on aesthetics - which is subjective

Danny proposed different factors that we consider when thinking about the quality of light

- intensity

- direction

- distribution

- temporal (does the light flicker?)

- colour

Different colours of light have been found to be most suitable for different activities. For example,

Blue light is good for working

Orange light is good for relaxation

These findings can be put to good use, for instance using orange lighting in bedrooms to help people sleep.

Danny demonstrated how we have a tendency to be affected more by changes in certain light colours than others, and this depends on the type of image we are looking at.

It was a thought provoking and interesting evening, and I am keen to attend more of the events organised by The Colour Group.

For more information about The Colour Group visit

http://www.colour.org.uk/index.php

Romanesco

There are certain shapes and forms that I instinctively find pleasing to the eye, romanesco being a good example of one of these. The following article gives an explanation of why this may be so.

I would like to work with this kind of form, or create forms that fit into each other. These would not necessarily be the identical, but could be of different sizes and proportions.