Walking into the bright, airy, converted warehouse that is the Spacex Gallery, I am confronted by maps. Moving satellite maps of the Earth’s oceans and rivers, diagrams of Polar flow currents, and plots of sedimentation and phytoplankton.
“Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism,” said the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, in January this year. This exhibition shows how art and science can be combined to do something about it.
“The two main energy sources today are fossil fuels and high dams, and neither is sustainable,” says internationally-renowned artist Peter Fend, recipient of the first “Science and Art” research fellowship at the University of Plymouth. “We’re polluting our environment, interfering with delicate ecosystems, and fostering dependence and political instability. What we need is zero-emission fuels from renewable resources.”
A series of satellite pictures shows how localised events, such as a runway extension at JFK airport in New York, can have knock-on effects, even contributing to the melting of the ice caps at the South Pole.
Other pictures highlight how waste flow-off from crowded cities or agriculture causes nutrient-rich pockets of water where marine and freshwater plants flourish. By collecting offshore and lowland biomass, we would not only have an alternative, renewable source of hydrocarbons, we’d be cleaning up after ourselves. “The South-West of England peninsula could provide a model for the whole of Europe,” adds Fend. “There’s no way the Bristol Channel is a healthy waterway.”
But while the methods used to identify problem areas and coastal regions suitable for such interventions are definitely high-tech, the solutions are what Fend calls medium-tech.
“It’s important to access common folk knowledge. These technologies have been working on a local scale for centuries. Now we just need to apply them globally.”
One visitor, though interested, remains dubious. “It’s very one-sided with regards to global warming,” he says.
Yet Fend’s collaborators, such as oceanographer Dr. Samantha Lavender at the University of Plymouth and agritech specialist Dr Steve Hughes at the University of Exeter, are certainly taking it seriously.
“Scientists are often afraid to use radical approaches for fear of being ridiculed by their peers,” says Hughes. “I think the benefit of projects like this is that they rattle the cage.”
To find out how cooperation between art and science could redirect environmental policy, visit this fascinating exhibition - part of the BA Festival of Science in the city - until Saturday 11th September.