Michael Pinsky selected for yearlong commission with Climart

British artist Michael Pinsky has been selected for a commission with Climart, a research project studying the impact of visual art on perceptions of climate change. 

Pinsky, whose international projects have created innovative and challenging works in galleries and public spaces, will work with researchers at Climart for approximately twelve months. He will collaborate with an interdisciplinary research team to develop a public artwork in Trondheim, Norway, that will embody aspects of the research and create a platform to test significance, affect and impact.

“I am excited by the prospect of being engaged with the Climart Project,” said Pinsky. “Many of my projects have involved close collaboration with cross-disciplinary partners including scientists, engineers, health professionals and urban planners. I have found these collaborations both enriching and inspiring, and I anticipate that the researchers involved in the Climart Project will profoundly influence and develop my artistic thinking.”

Climart is a four-year research project that examines the underlying psychological mechanisms involved in both the production and reception of visual art and uses these findings in an attempt to unite the natural science to the visual arts. The project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council and is housed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway.

Climart conducted an open call for applications for the commission, and required that the selected artist have experience in cross-disciplinary collaboration, art that is responsive to a discourse and research, and engagement with climate change.

Project leader Christian A. Klöckner said, “We are very excited to collaborate with Michael in our project because he has created very impactful artwork before and he is an artist that has always been very interested in the collaboration between science and art. I am convinced that in the discussions with him we will both create an outstanding work of art and get a new perspective on the scientific work we do.”

Installation of the work in Trondheim will take place in summer 2017.

For more information on the project, please visit www.climart.info

Climart active at COP21 in Paris

Press Release

30 November 2015

Can Art Move Citizens to Climate Action? Researchers in Paris are investigating.

Academic researchers will be conducting unique research during COP21 -- attempting to measure how art related to climate change affects viewers.

Graduate students will administer the questionnaires and interviews to attendees at various climate-related art events in Paris during the talks, events part of ARTCOP21 (artcop21.com.) The questionnaires are meant to establish basic information about attendees, determine their essential views about environmental topics and learn how the artworks affected them emotionally. The goal is to compare impact of exposure to each of these on people’s attitudes, beliefs, emotions and behaviors regarding climate change.

Three PhD students and two student assistants from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim will conduct the studies as part of ClimArt, a multi-year study on art, psychology and climate change funded by the Norwegian government.

"This is a special opportunity for us, because many different environmental artworks will be displayed in Paris simultaneously" says Christian Klockner, a professor of psychology at NTNU who leads the research. “I hope we learn whether visual art can be a bridge to action.”

The NTNU team will be speaking with viewers of roughly 30 artworks in Paris. Quantitative data from questionnaires will be collected  while qualitative studies, using interviews and rating sheets will add to their data. The team has collected data at environmental events before, but not art events.

In addition to collecting data ClimArt will be commissioning an artist to make art related to climate change in 2016, in an effort to better understand how artwork might inform viewers' views and choices about climate change.

Can visual art affect viewer perceptions of climate change?

This question lies at the core of the 4-year multidisciplinary research project Climart run by a team of international researchers in psychology, natural science and the arts. The project is led and housed at the Institute of Psychology at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway.

Launched in 2014, the research includes studies assessing how audiences are affected by climate-related artwork and the engagement of a visual art for this project itself.

The project will culminate in a public artwork in Trondheim in the summer of 2017. We hope the data we collect will inform the fields of environmental psychology, visual art and communication around sustainability and climate.

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