Concept, Thesis, & Claim

By 2030, the effects of climate change will be irreversible. Coastlines across the world will be devastated by the rise in seawater due to the melting polar caps. The increasing temperatures globally will metaphorically and literally set our Earth on fire. New York City will be at the front lines during this event. Our project will show the effects on global warming in an artistic manner to inspire the community to get involved and try to reverse out mistakes. Currently, our politicians are increasingly complacent and ignore the gravity of global warming. Recently, our president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn the United States from the Paris accord as well as rolled back countless of Obama Era environmental protections from the coal industry to clean water initiatives. This project is centered around claiming that our world needs saving and the people of our country need to take charge in order to prevent impending doom.

We hope that our piece inspires action from our audience. If our leadership does not take the right steps to preserve the planet and humanity, we cannot sit by complacently. There are ways every person can get involved; to help keep this planet going for generations to come. Whether that action is protest, volunteering, entrepreneurship, it doesn’t matter as long as it is a conscience effort, a collective effort, to solve this issue. We cannot solve this issue of climate change alone, and hopefully our project can show the dire situation and convince our audience to go out and make change, or at least spread the message of conservation. Climate change can only be combated with global cooperation, we hope our project, “Earth on Fire”, can aid in fostering this cooperation.

Breakdown of the Use & Need of Certain Materials

For our project we will be transforming two lanterns into globes. The first globe will mimic the Earth in present time. It will also be set on fire in a safe and controlled environment. This will be done to represent what’s occurring all over the world. The world is warming up exponentially and in some cases burning. Forest fires dominate the news today and multiple peer reviewed research papers show the drastic increase in temperature are the cause. The burning of the first globe will be recorded and will be available for viewing at our table during the STEAM festival. The second globe will mimic the projections of how the Earth will look like if climate change continues.. Projections by NASA and industry related researchers will be used to create an accurate representation of how the Earth may very well look like in the foreseeable future.

Future of the Earth – Source: Forbes Magazine

Lastly, an erasure poem will be created to view climate change through a political lens. The statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord will be contorted to show the repercussions of pulling out of the accord in the first place. Though this is the main thing we hope to represent, it may change as new ideas come to mind. All the objects used in the project will embody the world and will expose climate change for what it really is, a threat to the future of the planet and the next generation. All the pieces of the project put together show the effects of climate change in a tangible way. The transformation of the Earth is shown via the globes and the repercussions of pulling out of accords that fight climate change are shown via the erasure poem. We hope that the complexity of climate change being explained through art and poetry, will offer the audience a better perspective on this serious issue. We also hope that our message will be heard loud and clear!

Relationship Between the Art Work & the Audience

Our purpose for this project is for the viewers to be aware of the severity of climate change. The viewers would have an intimate visual interaction with our lanterns and our erasure poem. We hope that they will be first attracted to our destroyed lantern so that they can automatically compare it with the original, and undamaged lantern. This comparison allows the viewers to comprehend the damage of climate change and what it had done to our planet. Additionally, with our erasure poem, we hope to escalate the visual effects. Our poem is an erasure poem of the infamous Trump’s Paris Peace Accord Speech, in which he withdrew the United States from the international climate change treaty and subsequently led to many countries criticizing the US for it. Our plan is to erase parts of the speech by burning the edges and putting it with the burned lantern. The charred paper signifies the rise of global temperatures and also the destruction caused by the disasters of climate change. We hope that the viewers would look at the burned artwork, and automatically think of chaos and destruction while also fear the effects of climate change. The two lanterns represent a healthy earth and an earth destroyed by climate change. Through the visual differences, the viewers would then digest the harsh reality of what climate change has done to our planet.