Mary Widener, Garrett Kocourek, Hope Glassel, Mich Dillon, Meghan Berger, and Peter Green, “Breath”
Mentor: Nathaniel Stern, Art & Design

The numbers surrounding pollution and electronic waste, sustainable energy and climate change are so vast that they are difficult to fathom. Currently in the beginning, developmental stage, our research aims to embody such data at a human scale, creating a literal moving empathy with our environments. It asks for us to think and feel differently about matter and things, to engage with plants, waste, or greenhouse gasses on an intimate level, and to act towards change on a global scale. We are working on a series of kinetic sculptures that embody changing ecological data: for example, moss sighing at the rate of oxygen production in Brazil, leather shoes cantering to the quantity of methane or laptops palpitating to the number of lives lost to Cobalt mining. Each of these sculptures requires careful research and experimentation around the data used, the movements those numbers make, materials, mechatronics, code, and the qualifying texts that accompany them – calling for action, both personal and policy-based. Overall, we use aesthetic encounters to conceptually, scientifically, and ethically ask us to look, see, and act differently, with and for the world around us.