Climate Prisms Poetry by Michael G. Smith Climate Prisms: The Arctic is an interactive museum exhibit designed to bridge the distance between the physical world and the scientific interpretations and documentation. Using multiple approachable modalities from arts, sciences. literature and more. The work is designed to enable participants to engage with the science via the many types of content and at the pace, following their interests. With over 800 pieces of content, Climate Prisms presents a unique experience to viewers driven by their interests. The museum-based exhibit features a large display screen driven by a touch interface designed for individual or small group viewing. Content paths are determined by the selected imagery all of which held in a database tagged by scientific subject, type of content and intended audience. The screen shows a set of images. The image selection enables viewers to dive deeper into the depicted area of content as well as providing access to content related by theme or type. Project Home Page at Bradbury Museum Climate Prisms: The Arctic is an interactive museum exhibit about three Arctic researchers exploring and documenting the rapidly changing Arctic tundra. The work focuses on these scientists’ primary specialties: geomorphology, hydrology and biogeochemistry. The work provides entry into their laboratories, field sites and daily research activities, pulling away the veil that obscures the scientific process and grounding abstractions in human experience. Climate Prisms allows users to explore the Arctic through different perspectives: science, art, photography, poetry, scientific visualizations, videos, and more. The goal of this work is to bridge the distance between the physical world and scientific process through multiple approachable modalities pulled from both the world of art and the world of science. Content paths are determined by an underlying system of tags, levels, content categories and related research areas. A screen shows a set of images. Each image can be accessed to provide image-specific information or can act as a launch point for a new set of related content and images that allows the user to continue exploring their chosen subject matter. Each person creates a unique path through hundreds of pieces of climate content. Embedded assessments log basic demographics of each individual that interacts with the work. Each participant is able to plot their own path through the complex science, moving through the content at the pace and level of detail that best enabled them to engage with the material. Scientists NGEE: Arctic research is conducted by scientists at the Barrow Environmental Observatory in Barrow, Alaska, and multiple sites on the Seward Peninsula. Los Alamos National Laboratory is a lead organization in the project, and Cathy Wilson is the institutional lead for the Lab. Cathy J Wilson, LANL Brent Newman, LANL Joel Rowland, LANL Craig Tweedie, UT El Paso Mark Petersen, LANL Ethan Coon, LANL Artists To create different pathways to understand and appreciate the science of climate change, Climate Prisms features the work of multiple artists in multiple media. Francesca Samsel provides a guiding voice and vision leading the art provision and selection. Francesca Samsel, UT Austin Florencia Mazza Ramsay Heather Ward Elizabeth Starks Michael G. Smith Telo Hoy Large-Scale Display Stallion is a high resolution tiled-display. The cluster provides users with the ability to perform visualizations on a 6×3 tiled display of Samsung 65″ 8K QLED tv’s resulting in a ~30 foot wide display with an aggregate resolution of 597 megapixels. This configuration allows for visualizations at an extremely high level of detail and quality compared to a typical moderate pixel count projector. With software developed by TACC staff, the cluster provides over 74GB of graphics memory, 1.28TB of system memory, 19TB aggregate local disk storage, and 232 processing cores. ASSOCIATED PUBLISHED ARTICLES Climate Prisms: The Arctic Connecting Climate Research and Climate Modeling via the Language of Art ASSOCIATED VIDEOS
