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Silent Spring: A climate Change Acceleration Performance

Silent Spring: A climate Change Acceleration Performance from liam young on Vimeo.

Coal miners once hammered rock with twittering canaries living beside them, their changing song a warning alarm for a dangerous gas leak. These living sensors watched over us and kept us safe.

‘Singing Sentinels’ by London-based architect Liam Young of Tomorrows Thoughts Today explores a future scenario where bio-engineered birds once again monitor the air for us. Eighty birds have been released into the New Order exhibition at the Mediamatic Gallery in Amsterdam as an ecological warning system, living in the space and providing audible feedback on the state of the atmosphere. Across the course of the exhibition Liam performed the climate change acceleration piece 'Silent Spring' seen in the film above. As a 'pollution DJ', he flooded the gallery with CO2, altereing the air mixture to replicated the predicted atmospheric changes of the next 100 years. We hear the canary song subtly shift, their rythmn change and eventually silence, as the birds sing a toxic sky- an elegy for a changing planet.

To accompany the exhibition Liam Young, Geoff Manuagh and Tim Maly have written a near future birdwatchers guide "A Field Guide to Singing Sentinels: A Birdwatchers Companion" with illustrations from comic illustrator Paul Duffield. You can see an excerpt and purchase your copy of the limited edition book online here http://products.liamyoung.org/

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Comment by Catherine Mascrès on December 9, 2012 at 9:58pm: Thank you for sharing.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on December 2, 2012 at 8:38am: Here is another report that says: Crop Yields May Be Lessened Due To Carbon Dioxide

Atmospheric carbon dioxide content continues its climb, heating up the climate. For plants, however, the gas is a necessary part of their survival. It provides the carbon needed to produce glucose and other important substances, leading scientists to question if more carbon dioxide is better.

The answer isn’t as simple as that, unfortunately. The plants used for our most basic food supply today have not been bred for vertical growth. Rather, they were bred for short stalks and a high yield of grains. A new study from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and the University of Potsdam reveals that an increase in carbon dioxide levels could cancel out the beneficial effects of dwarf varieties of food crops.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112739946/rice-grain-crop-yie...

Comment by Phillip H George on December 2, 2012 at 3:19am: Sad, And No Time To Waste!
I named a major river today; within my understandings it's, "The Plastic River," and like all rivers it too runs into earths salt-waters, there shaping anew future for ALL!
Thank-you, Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa!