Throughout 2016, an interactive art installation version of Lucy Burnett‘s hybrid novel, Through the Weather Glass, went on UK tour of 16 different venues, inviting participants to join Icarus on a Lewis Carrollian journey through the weather glass of climate change into the world beyond! Through the Weather Glass tells a fictionalised version of the author’s struggles to understand environmental change through the persona of Icarus during a 2500 mile cycle to the Greek island of Icaria in the summer of 2010. The interactive installation version of the novel playfully invites audiences to help the author continue this journey, by participating in negotiating new stories about climate change than the apocalyptic norm, by asking:
What if we can’t solve climate change, and is viewing the future apocalyptically really helpful?
How can art help us respond to climate change in innovative new ways? What might the world look like if we travelled through everything we know about climate change and participated in the world beyond?
The installation invited participants to pedal the bike powered TV, watch an animated Google Earth film, listen to poetry or flick through photography, learn how a barometric weather glass works, or to write their own thoughts on paper feathers and stick them to Icarus’s willow wings!
The importance of 'hope' as opposed to 'fear' as a means of communicating climate change, and how asking people how they would like to participate in climate change (what climate would they like to participate in making) is a more enabling message than more familiar persuasive techniques.
