I’M CLIMATE.

Are we just spectators or active participants in the climate system? For Nuit Blanche 2023, Arctrn explored this idea through a colourful light installation and interactive data visualizations generated in real-time to explore visitor perceptions of the relationship between humans and climate.

The interconnectedness of human activities with something of the magnitude of global climate is challenging to comprehend. We are inclined to create distance between ourselves and the systems we are a part of.

It is more accurate to think of ourselves as participants in a climate system. Our numbers and activities have direct and indirect influences on the system – large or minuscule, this is a fact. The objective of this project was to draw attention to the belief that we are climate-embedded and not merely spectators.

Group of people standing in line outside a modern restaurant or bar, with one person ordering at a counter, illuminated by neon and warm lighting, brick walls, and a large window showing indoor lighting.

How can we grow to accept our embeddedness in the climate system?

A great place to start is to simply raise the question in peoples’ minds. To do this, we asked our spectators three simple questions about their beliefs around their impact and potential to have an impact on climate change. They answered by pressing buttons that were connected to a live visualization that responded to their inputs by growing or shrinking depending on their answer—having a direct impact on the visualization, in the same way that we have a direct impact on climate change. The idea was to draw attention to the impact their beliefs have on climate change—if one believes they can have a positive impact, they are more likely to act on those beliefs and make changes in their life to do so.

Interactive installation on climate change with questions and colored buttons for responses, illuminated by a small desk lamp.

The installation kept a tally of each button pressed and at the end of the night had a count of the answers visitors had given to each question.

The results were positive, with the majority of visitors both believing that humans were having a negative impact on climate change and being open to making changes in their lives to reduce their impact.

However, a smaller number of visitors believe that they could have a positive impact on climate change.

Bar chart showing survey responses on climate change impact, with questions about belief in negative or positive impacts and willingness to change personal behavior, using blue, red, and yellow bars for Yes, No, and Maybe responses.
Abstract digital art of curved lines in shades of purple and red on a black background.
Abstract digital artwork showing a pattern of curved, rectangular shapes in shades of red, purple, and blue on a black background.

A static representation of our generative visualization installation.

An outdoor display with a lit informational panel and two large screens showing abstract digital art behind a brick building. The ground is dirt with some gravel, and a small plant is near the wall.
Nighttime scene outside a brick building with large windows. Three people are walking or standing near the entrance, while one person is interacting with a machine or kiosk. There are yellow safety posts, small trees, and seating in the area. A large
A woman watching a projection on a large window at night, which displays interconnected circles with lines. The scene is outside a brick building with some outdoor furniture and a small Christmas tree nearby.
Nighttime scene outside a building with people standing and chatting near a yellow safety post. A large window displays a colorful digital screen, and a small plant is positioned in front of the wall. There is a green bench nearby, and a red chair wi
Two people standing outside at night, one wearing a black cap and the other with a bicycle helmet, looking at an illuminated display on a brick building with abstract colorful shapes on the window.

Show your stripes.

Another element of our installation was an interpretation of the globally adopted Climate Stripes, originally conceived by climate professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading. Ed Hawkins created the Climate Stripes in 2018 to represent global rising temperatures with a series of colour bars that progress from blue, representing cooler temperatures, to red, representing warmer temperatures. The result is a snapshot of how much warmer, on average, the world has been getting in the last decades.

Climate Stripes have been produced for more than 200 countries, states and cities at showyourstripes.info, and people around the world have adopted the concept with their own interpretations widely shared on social media with the hahstag #showyourstripes. 

Color-coded bar graph depicting global temperature change from 1850 to 2022, with shades of blue indicating cooler periods and shades of red indicating warmer periods, showing a trend of increasing temperature over time.

The Climate Stripes concept was so closely aligned with our objective to make visually plain our connectedness to climate that we decided to showcase Toronto’s climate stripes as part of our installation. We created a lighting display along the columns of the building beside our interactive panel, with each column flooded with variations of blues and reds representing the average recorded temperature of select years from 1841 to 2022. The temperatures ranged from 5.5°C (dark blue) to 11.0°C (dark red). Visitors could walk the length of the building to read what the year and average temperature were on each column.

What are the implications of rising temperatures? It depends on where you live; in the north, the issue may be melting permafrost or sea ice, while in Ontario, it might be extreme heat and storms in the summer and more or less snow in the winter.

With our installation, we are hopeful that talking about climate change is the first and most essential thing we can all do. 

Nuit Blanche Event Listing

A color-coded chart illustrating annual temperatures in Toronto from 1841 to 2017, with a gradient scale from dark blue representing 5.5°C to dark red representing 11.0°C.
A circular sign showing Toronto's average temperature in 1995 as 9.2°C, mounted on a red brick wall.
A group of people standing outside a brick building at night, illuminated by red lights, with some people using their phones.
A brick wall illuminated by red light from above in a dark room, with a label at the bottom indicating the year 1973 and Toronto's average temperature of 9.9°C.
Nighttime street view with a sidewalk next to a building illuminated by red and blue lights, streetlights in the background, and a shadow of a person or object in the foreground.

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