DESCRIPTION:

Noctilucent Canary

2017

Series of three prints on silk

L620 W700mm - each

The series Noctilucent Canary explores the edges of vision. Employing the idea of a satellite as ‘an all seeing eye in the sky’, telemetry, data and images of Noctilucent phenomena are filtered through a series of lenses and prisms to explore the transitory process through which super-ecological[i] phenomena become visible.

Visible only in Earth’s shadow at deep twilight, Noctilucent clouds[ii] are visual signifiers of climate change in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Increasing in frequency, brightness and extent, Noctilucent clouds are being flagged by scientists as Earth’s ‘atmospheric climate canary’ heralding the visible beginning of the anthropogenic era.

[i] Super Ecology – The concept that the natural and artificial have become inextricably bound within one greater super ecological system.

[ii] Noctilucent (night shining) clouds exist in the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 76,000 – 85,000 meters. There is no record of them existing before 1885.