707,07% / 792,93%
The amount of information available about climate change is as helpful as it is confusing. Numbers, percentages, colors, and charts convey scientific facts with great precision. The information is clear, but it often lacks context and therefore it becomes difficult to absorb. It should incite strong reactions, but the visual uniformity in the way statistics—regardless of field—are presented makes it hard to distinguish the everyday from the urgent.
In this project, my interest in how science is communicated and interpreted has led me to turn percentage‑based statistics about climate change into color fields, in an effort to highlight the distortion that occurs between information and the interpretation of it. The work consists of two paintings, one titled 707,07 % and the other 792,93 %.
I have been visually inspired by the “warming stripes” diagram type, where chronologically ordered stripes visualize temperature trends, but instead of temperature trends, my paintings are based on a collection of disparate climate data that, within the paintings, exist side by side.
I structured both paintings from the same data, but treated the data in different ways. The colors are the same, but the proportions shift. Through this process, painting becomes my way of exploring the relationship between numbers, color fields, and distortions in the conveyance of important information. It is also a way of bringing the information back into the physical world.
