Artist Discussion – Andrea Polli

Why is artwork concerned with ecological issues often characterised as didactic or as ‘jumping on the band wagon’?

Andrea Polli is an artist who is motivated by her strong ecological convictions as well as her imaginative exploration of technology’s potential rather than its limits. She treads a delicate line between raising consciousness through her concerns for her community within the wider eco-system and creating work with multi-sensory appeal to the senses.  I am drawn to her practice because of a fascination I also share with the science of Meteorology. I first encountered Andrea Polli’s work as a description in Leonardo journal of her Atmospherics/Weatherworks project (2001) where she worked with a scientist who created spatial visualisations of storms. At the time I was working with ‘micro-meteorological data’ of miniature weather effects as eddies of air and water in an area of New Zealand that had been mined. Andrea describes how she transformed weather data into sound to reveal the development of a hurricane using a process called ‘sonification’. The numerical data from the storm was turned into a multi-channel spatialised sound installation. At the same I read about her work, I was also testing how I could visualise or sonify data produced by micro-meteorological events in my own work.

Another example of Andrea’s lateral approach to ‘weather as media’ is the conceptual project the Queensbridge Windpower project (2004?). She worked with designer Markus Maurette on this project proposal to power the lights of Queensbridge in New York with wind turbines which are sensitive to the original architecture of the bridge. This sustainable method to power the necklace of lights on the bridge reveals how an artist can contribute to the development of an ecological aesthetic.

Andrea Polli has years of experience collaborating with environmental scientists, most recently at Weather Stations in Antarctica in the 90 degrees South project (2007-8). As an artist, I have learned from her methods of research with scientists through the documentation of her projects and interviews online and the workshop at SCANZ in Taranaki in 2006. Andrea refutes the idea that technology should be left to the scientists and engineers. Her work has a cultural impact, which is as significant as ‘Big Science’ claims to meet the pressing challenge of climate change.

Janine Randerson is an artist and researcher who works with meteorological data and climate change.