Reflection

Reflection

In 2022, Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist, went “viral” after he and other scientists chained themselves to the doors of a large bank in downtown LA, eventually getting themselves arrested. As a protest against the funding of the production of fossil fuels, Kalmus desperately aimed to raise awareness about the dangers of climate change and for the public to realize this “catastrophe.” In my piece, I created an animated GIF of an agamograph in blender 3D that represented the scene of the protest (digital painting), juxtaposed with a sea of dead, bleached coral (acrylic painting). The scene of the dull and colorless corals is what the protest warns against and is a consequence of the continuous burning of fossil fuels. The people in the digital painting all stare down at their phones, representing how ignored the cry for help and change is. They are all scattered in front of the bank that stands in front of what they fund: fossil fuel power plants emitting immense amounts of pollutants. Within the chaos of the two intertwined scenes stands Peter Kalmus with a megaphone. I wanted to portray the desperation of needing to warn the public and trying to encourage change within how we function as a society. The inspiration for making the final piece into the agamograph was so that I could show the connection between what people have done—both the contribution to climate change and the protest against it—while simultaneously showing the nature that gets affected by our inactivity. I hope that by presenting a complex display of the current climate crisis and the “heroes” who work to raise awareness, this piece will also warn the public about how important it is to reduce our carbon footprint.