Nuage Vert
a project by Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (hehe.org)
Nuage Vert is part of the longterm art project Pollstream by Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen in collaboration with industrial and scientific partners. Pollstream speculates on aesthetic and contextual ways of materializing pollution in ways that alter our perception.
Is pollution something that is artificial, man made, something extra, which we add to the natural word? Or does pollution always exist, even in environments that are not interfered with by humans? And even if we consider the emissions, the waste and all the other “synthetic” overflows as not natural, they are still part of the same system. The entity from which we take and into which we stream back stays the same, in the words of Martin Creed: “the whole world + the work = the whole world”.
Pollstream is being materialised as a body of research, writings, project proposals and technology development. At the core of the project is the proposal Nuage Vert. This proposal suggests using industrial waste burning plants as a site for architectural installations, by utilising artificial vapour emissions as a canvas for information flow. The choice of information shown is related to the ecological activities of the local community, such as recycling or energy consumption.
Gas emissions have two sides to them: the visual and the chemical. These aspects impact differently on the individual depending upon their location and their situation. Nuage Vert is based one the first attribute, the visual impact. The visual appearance of the gas can lure us into an experience and is detached from the second possibly dangerous attribute, the chemical. Chemically speaking gas pollution is measured in Parts Per Million (ppm). In science this numeric approach spans usually from “normal saturation in office buildings” to “instantly lethal”. Pollstream should decipher these numbers and translate terms like “end-tidal breath” into collective experiences.
During the Pixelache residency the Pollstream research has addressed the two issues, the visual and the chemical. Nuage Vert has been developed in terms of project planning and it’s technical requirements. This process includes research on imaging and tracking technology, institutional and industrial partners have been approached for its realisation in Finland.
The research on the second attribute, the chemical has led to two new works, “Chambre d’air” and “Smoking room”. Chambre d’air is looking into the fluctuations of CO2 production in an enclosed environment in regards to the number of people in it. This process and its first installation has been developed in collaboration with Vaisala in Finland, a company which develops environmental and industrial monitoring sensors world wide. Smoking room is an installation that reacts to people smoking. The sensor for this installation has been developed by HEHE during the Pixelache residency. Both works are reflecting the discussions about gas emissions, ownership and responsibility.
Helen Evans (United Kingdom, 1972) & Heiko Hansen (Germany, 1970) design and build performing spaces. Using a language based on light, sound and image, their practice explores the interactive possibilities between individuals’ and their architectural and urban environment. Looking at a broad range of contexts, from public transport design, pollution monitoring, meteorology, public advertising, architecture to civil engineering, their work offers a critical, non-commercial reinterpretation of these systems, putting the spectator in the centre of the experience. Broad in their approach, they have been members of scientific research laboratories, taught graduate and undergraduate media design students and collaborated with other visual and performance artists.
www.hehe.org