Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir who form the collaborative Ecoarttech have a new web art piece that brings the physical cycles of the moon into the electronic realm of the Internet.At sunrise and sunset, fluctuating orbs of light disrupt the “digital landscape,” and the information environment of the website for the Whitney Museum of American Art (whitney.org). The regular museum website is ruptured by ecoarttech’s visual intervention of blurry orbs overpowing the other online information timed to coincide precisely with sunrise and sunset in New York City (EST); viagra online without prescription.The size and speed of the orbs will vary based on the number of visitors to whitney.org since the previous sunrise (for sunset) or sunset (for sunrise); higher visitation results in larger viagra online without prescription, slower-moving orbs.
Ecoarttech’s work has consistently explored relationships between landscape, technology, and culture, and their commissioned work for whitney.org metaphorically explores the museum’s information landscape as it is shaped by its visitors.
I am going to have my classes tune in live in Chicago on January 5 and 6, 2010 to observe this unnatural phenomenon.
Unnatural sunrise by Ecoarttech temporarily disrupts the Whitney's main web portal.
Eclipse is an interactive artwork that alters and corrupts appropriated photographs of United States national and state parks based on real-time Air Quality Index readings from the web (AQI or particle pollution data is available from airnow.gov).Eclipse was commissioned by Turbulence.org and was created by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir, who produce ecoarttech.net.
I tried the application out a few times on various parks, then I focused in on looking at pollution as manifested in Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. Have a look at the images. The lower photo seems to show more yellow and has one thick band as opposed to the multiple thin ones in the image above. What I’m a bit confused about is the way that the air quality is visualized in the photos. The Eclipse website states that the higher the AQI reading, then “the more the park image is corrupted though a set of algorithms that affect color, saturation, and contrast..” However in the Daniel Boone pics, the reading of 18 produces two rather different outcomes. Also, as the air quality is “good” the disruption is kind of severe. I tried a ton of locations and finally found one that registers as a “moderate” on the AQI scale: Eldorado National Park which is near Sacramento, CA. Note below that the screenshot shows slightly wider bands of color. I’m not clear on the difference between moderate and good AQI readings from an info-aesthetic perspective.
The concept of using the Flickr photographs as a baseline reading for pollutant levels from the city nearest the national treasure is quite poetic. I wish that the results of the image processing application were a bit more readable. Maybe carbon monoxide could be represented by one hue and nitric oxide by another? At any rate, go check out this fascinating website and see for yourself.
