Der Wandel in Zahlen, Climate Thermometer

Der Wandel in Zahlen is a custom eco-thermometer in Berlin, Germany. Designed to raise public awareness of anthropogenic global warming; a standard temperature sensor gives the current temperature value, which is compared against stored statistical data from the sametime 50 years ago. The difference is calculated and presented on the an l.e.d display above the main one.

This is an effective example of the arts attempting to mobilise social conscience with regards to the global warming argument, and through doing so highlights a zeitgeist issue of climate change, i.e. by a person observing the percentage increase in global temperature they are prompted to consider the issue further…and hopefully do something about it.

However an attempt to affect social conscience in this way has its obvious moral implications. The main question to be asked is upon what facts is the designer, Andreas Nicolas Fischer, making these calculations. Future predictions about the state of the worlds ecological situation vary drastically, with considered acceptable data changing every day, one enquiry into global warming’s facts are the fiction of tomorrows study. 

Furthermore, future predictions about the state of the world are often wrong, in fact economic predictions are rarely taken to be anything more than word play, but we find ourselves in the situation where a climate model prediction has been enacted and legitimised by the art world. 

This may be even more worrying when we consider that the anthropogenic climate change, and the computer models used to provide evidence for its existence are now being rapidly incorporated into public policy. 

(R.e. DESIGN FUTURES LECTURE)