Video: AWEN – Encountering Climate Emergency (panel discussion)

As part of the New Real’s ‘AWEN’ project in 2021, key members of the multidisciplinary creative team got together online to share their thoughts on why and how the project was

conceived and created and on its potential to inspire users to look at their surroundings in a new light and think differently about their environment and their place within it.

Born out of the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute/The New Real in collaboration with the Edinburgh Science Festival, and the brainchild of a multidisciplinary team of artists, technologists and environmentalists, ‘AWEN’ set out to develop a new data art experience; an artwork that could both engage lockdown audience and also inspire behavioural and/or attitudinal change on the climate emergency.

In this conversation, the panel explores how ‘AWEN’ took the simple yet profound idea of inviting people to engage with the environment in a deep, multisensory way that – through connecting people with nature and climate issues in novel ways – looks to help energise a new era of climate awareness and global behavioural change.

Chair: Amanda Tyndall, Festival and Creative Director, Edinburgh Science.

Panel: Lead Artist, Inés Cámara Leret; Interactive Digital Designer, Brendan McCarthy, Ray Interactive; Matjaz Vidmar, Deputy Director of The New Real research programme, The Edinburgh Future’s Institute; Daisy Narayanan, Senior Manager for Mobility and Placemaking, Edinburgh City Council.

Presented by: Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Edinburgh Science Festival.

Cite as: Inés Cámara Leret, Brendan McCarthy, Matjaz Vidmar, Daisy Narayanan and Amanda Tyndall (2021). Video: ‘AWEN: Encountering Climate Emergency.’ The New Real Magazine, Edition Two. pp 94-95. https://youtu.be/5QFjxQHP9fw