Creativity meets scientific data: Artist Akira Wakita showed Mother Earth at the Ars Electronica Festival as an imposing entity beyond humankind.
How to express the impact of climate change from an artistic standpoint while using scientific data? Artist Akira Wakita presented his approach with MOTHER FLUCTUATION at this year’s Futurelab Night Performances during the Ars Electronica Festival. Through multiple scenes, the work focuses on the phenomenon of fluctuation (rise and fall) of temperature, sea level altitude, markets, and civilization, and depicts Mother Earth, which is indifferent to human activity.
The piece was part of the Data Art & Science Project by the Ars Electronica Futurelab in collaboration with Toyota Coniq Alpha which was presented at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023. Visitors could experience five artistic explorations that combine data art and data science. As seen here, the projects were also presented in Deep Space 8K – one of the highlights of the Futurelab Night Performances at the Festival.
Referencing the expression of traditional Japanese hell painting (Jigoku-e), the work renders landscapes that remind us of the catastrophe that global warming will bring to mankind by manipulating open scientific data in an art-specific manner. The team aimed to create an immersive visual and acoustic space with 8K video and 5.1 stereoscopic sound.