The message of sustainability gets a facelift.
It’s the year 2013 and, while we’ve survived a host of doomsday predictions, the reality of resource depletion through industry and lifestyle is a cold hard fact. The City of Sydney is aware of this actuality and now operates on an ongoing principle of sustainability.
Yet translating the necessity of this eco-aware stance to a world of everything-on-demand is challenging. This is where Art & About Sydney can help.
According to Lord Mayor Clover Moore, ‘Environmental sustainability is now a given in everything we do. During last year’s Art & About Sydney the water in the raining house (I Wish You Hadn’t Asked by James Dive and the Glue Society) was recycled through a tank underneath the house. This year, our neon-coloured snails (Snailovation by the Cracking Art Group) will be recycled once the festival’s over. We will also have an artwork based on real-time data of energy consumption in the City.’
The project referred to here is Building Run, by artist Keith Deverell. The video installation uses the real-time energy consumption of buildings to control human avatars. The project is set up as a race between these avatars and uses the language of sport to create the narrative.
According to Deverell, ‘I felt that there was a potential to create a poetic work that used a common language that has significant cultural sway in Australia.’
Deverell is interested in using the language of sport to transcend hurdles relating to current socio-political discussions. ‘In debates around larger global issues its often hard to understand the situations as we haven’t actually felt it. In this work the idea of humanising buildings, of talking about health, of exercise, is something that we understand through our very being.’
As each day ticks by, patterns of the installation will change depending on the usage of data within each building. This will affect how the human avatar runs.
By promoting sustainability and revisualising the way environmental data is communicated, a greater awareness regarding sustainability and lifestyle can be achieved. ‘I think generally I would like people to consider the work as an internal question about life and how we live it,’ said Deverell.
‘We can break down some of these larger complex questions that are laden with history and politics and place a simpler question around them … How do we want to live?’
Building Run will be exhibited at The Assembly – Deutsche Bank Place, 126 Phillip Street, Sydney (Entry via Hunter Street) for the duration of Art & About Sydney.
Art & About Sydney will run from 20 September to 20 October. For information about installations and events visit the Art & About Sydney website.
(Pictured: ‘Building Run’ (image cropped))
