The artwork generates digital twins of two remote natural saline lagoons in the Atacama desert, using drones, photogrammetry and gaming engine visualisation. These are linked in real-time with an automated web search for terms associated with green energy policies and lithium-led energy transitions. The landscapes decay over time as digital water levels deplete incrementally with each web hit. In collapsing the distance between these remote, unique desert saline waterbodies, and the centres of global north’s political and economic power, the work visualises- through a contemporary digital take on the Euro-historic visual art modality of ‘landscape’- a water-led speculative storytelling of cause to effect; of a passage from complexity to complexity.
Website: www.imal.org/en/events/naturarchy/with-salt-and-rocks-in-our-veins
Creators: Penelope Cain, Scientific Collaborator: Graziano Ceddia & Luca de Felice
Funder: JRC SciArt in partnership with iMAL