A digital media art installation and communications platform designed to make visible the scale of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere by human activity will be unveiled in Copenhagen for the launch of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties from December 7-18, 2009.
The exhibition, titled “CO2 CUBES: Visualize a Tonne of Change,” bridges art and studio lab technology. “World-renowned artists, architects, scientists, and technologists have joined forces to deliver an art experience that will leave a lasting impression, and help people understand the impact of our CO2 footprint, while inspiring new solutions that we can individually and collectively take part in to reduce our CO2 emissions,” describes Mia Hanak, Executive Director of Millennium ART. “We created the CO2 CUBES – Visualize a Tonne of Change exhibit as part of the UN Millennium Development Goals, themed on Goal 7, ensuring environmental sustainability, a challenge facing every country in the world today.”
Nature installation artist Alfio Bonanno, and award winning architect Christophe Cornubert merged vision and design to help us see the size of 1 metric tonne of carbon dioxide. Measured and stored at standard atmospheric pressure, one tonne of CO2 occupies an art cube the size of a 3-story building 8.2m x 8.2m x 8.2m (27ft3). This is the amount of CO2 the average person in an industrialized country emits each month, and in the US, every two weeks.
The CO2 CUBE is also a communications platform for public engagement, utilizing a live web portal powered by Google and You Tube to provide a means for people to “virtually” take part in the global dialogue, sharing ideas and solutions about how to reduce our own individual cubes, lessening our impact on climate change. “Google and YouTube have a mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The CO2 Cube is an innovative way to amplify the conversations happening in Copenhagen so that more people can access the dialogue taking place. This exhibit truly will bring more information to more people, and that makes it a perfect fit for our mission,” states Chris Di Cesare, Chief Marketing Officer of YouTube.
"Our programmers have created a completely new type of communications media system for the CO2 Cube. This system enables us to fuse art, data visualization, and streaming content, dynamically, “Travis Threlkel, Founder and Executive Creative Director of Obscura Digital, Inc. “When people witness this monolithic cube in action they will be seeing something very new."
