Perturbatio is a participatory installation that seeks to render visible the emergence of cumulative effects on our environment, arising from the many small actions of individuals.
It invites the public to think about the scale and the difficulty of linking supposedly mundane activities to their global consequences. Perturbatio intends to spark a realisation that individuals are entangled in wider social, technical and cultural systems which are themselves entwined with Earth systems.
Since no individual or social group exists in a vacuum, this closely knit web of relations and interactions is both constrained by and putting pressure on planetary boundaries, participating in resource extraction, biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, land depletion…
Like an imprint of our collective busyness, Perturbatio reflects on the decentralised and collective nature of the ecological crisis.
Authors: Tim Schneider (Le sas), Charles Ménard-Wendling (The Shift Project)
Perturbatio is a direct product of LeCAKE Train: The artists, Tim Schneider and Charles Ménard-Wendling, met through the project and started working together on the installation as a sort of spin-off. The installation incorporates ecological aspects both in the topics addressed and in the logistics and the design of the exhibition approaches. In this context, it seeks to apply principles learned and knowledge acquired during the previous models of LeCAKE Train, in particular WP2 and WP3 (details are presented in the section “Ecological considerations”).
An important aim of Perturbatio is to inspire a reflective thought process within the visitors and to spark a discussion about our daily actions and their impact on the environment – both near and far. To achieve this, the installation uses representations of different land- and cityscapes rendered as point clouds (three-dimensional models broken up into millions of separated coloured dots) that can portrait local or remote eco-systems. For instance, during the pilot event held on October 1st, 2024 in Gelsenkirchen, point clouds of different neighbourhoods of the city of Gelsenkirchen were presented while another idea (yet to be realised) was to show point clouds of Portuguese river valleys (a collaboration with the the Portuguese partner Ex Quorum and their performance on water). During the event in Gelsenkirchen, the artists were present next to the installation and engaged in discussions with the visiting public.
The installation served a double purpose in this context, as a starting point for the discussions with the audience but also as an eye-catcher that provokes the interest of passers-by and makes them stop to interact with the installation. More details on the interactions with the public around Perturbatio and on the topic of ecology are presented in the corresponding sections.
1. Description
Perturbatio is designed to work with a variety of visualisation supports and to be easily adaptable to different exhibition environments.
Click Here2. Artistic approach and development methodology
The research focused on a corpus of international artists and their corresponding works. Point clouds and in particular their three-dimensional volumetric rendering of reality were studied through the lens of ecological thought.
Click Here3. Interactions with the public about ecology
Perturbatio is very effective in engaging the audience in meaningful discussions about ecology. Both thanks to its visually incitative and interactive nature, and because of the message the installation carries.
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