Final Description

Liza Howard

The idea behind this studio was to get the public aware of climate change. One of the main ideas was to get people to turn climate change from an idea to something that people can feel in their bodies and actually experience. By trying to get everyone educated on climate change, we wanted to invent a piece that would shock the publics eye. We knew that we wanted our piece to be very intriguing so that people in the city would actually want to experience it.

Our idea was to create basically a lenticular wall comprised of panels of mirror, glass, and a painting of Boston underwater. This means that the panels are angled so that you see something different when you look at the wall from different perspectives. We went through a lot of ideas before getting to this final idea. The wall will be split up into three mobile, rotatable sections and is going to be installed as a permanent installation at NuVu. From one side, it is a really cool way to view the world. You see yourself in the mirror as you look from one direction, and as you move you begin to see the world on the other side of the wall through the glass. A feature we weren’t expecting is that as you look through the glass you see underwater Boston reflected as well. From the other side, you see your own surroundings through the glass, and then it morphs into the underwater Boston view. This will affect people in a variety of ways, putting them in the mindset of climate change by putting them in an underwater situation. Lastly we added a track onto a scale model of the space where the wall would take place. The track allowed a wheel attached at the top of each frame slide back and forth so it was able to be slid to the side.

As a result, this wall is meant to evoke a specific emotion from it’s audience. Climate change is a pressing issue in our world today, and awareness about it is lacking. When people look at our piece and see an image of their entire city under water, it is an unconventional way of making them conscious of the fact that our world is changing. The glass part of the intervention is another way of expressing the idea of climate change and rising water level. It compliments the image by creating the feeling of waves. You can see through to the other side however, which symbolizes the idea that we do have hope, and we can stop climate change by putting in more of an effort. Not only does this piece contain artistic and functional elements, but it is impactful and will almost certainly stimulate thoughts and conversation. Overall, we are happy with the final product, and are looking forward to seeing it deployed in the real world!