Visual or media artwork for museum installation about ethics & emerging technologies (climate engineering)

TechEthos is an EU-funded project that deals with the ethics of the new and emerging technologies anticipated to have high socio-economic impact. Three technology families have been identified as its focus area: Digital Extended Reality, Climate Engineering, and Neurotechnologies.

TechEthos aims to facilitate “ethics by design”, namely, to bring ethical and societal values into the design and development of new and emerging technologies from the very beginning of the process. The project will produce operational ethics guidelines for three technologies for users such as researchers, research ethics committees and policymakers. To reconcile the needs of research and innovation and the concerns of society, the project has been exploring the awareness, acceptance and aspirations of academia, industry and the general public alike and is currently working to reflect them in the guidelines.

Six science centres and museums involved in the project as Linked Third Parties (LTPs) have been engaging their public in various activities, such as science cafés and game workshops to collect their awareness and attitudes towards the three technology families.

During the final year of the project, the many insights available from the process will be displayed using an installation that will be built and showcased for a minimum of two months by participating science centres and museums and digitalised on the project website to reach a wider audience.

As part of this installation, we would like to showcase an art piece that adds meaning and sparks reflections around the ethical challenges of Climate Engineering. As a result, we are currently looking for an artist to propose a piece of their artwork.

The winning entry will be used in project communications and displayed in science centres and museums as well as in the online version of the installation.

1. Brief

Ecsite is looking for an art piece on the theme of Climate Engineering in line with the following criteria:

• The artwork is expected to be screen-based visual or media artwork (examples of appropriate formats are short videos, edited or unedited photography, digital drawing or digital painting, animated image, digitally generated video, data visualisation, …);
• The artwork should be high-resolution in 16:9 ratio.
• Only artists based in Europe will be considered. We particularly encourage artists based in countries where the artwork will be displayed to apply (Austria, Sweden).
• The artwork can be included in our installation which will be licensed as CC BY-SA (Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike). Ideal compatibility of the artwork’s license is expected to be Free Art License FAL (or Licence Art Libre). Adequate attribution to the artist will be ensured.
• The artwork will spark interest or address ethical challenges related to climate engineering.

About climate engineering

Climate engineering is a family of technologies that enables the modification of natural processes and human activities looking to detect, mitigate and respond to global threats due to the climate change crisis, locally and globally.

Some examples of such technologies are carbon capture, usage and storage technologies (CCUS), artificial photosynthesis, algae and microorganisms against climate change…

Climate engineering has different ethical implications, such has:

• Moral hazard: does climate engineering undermine climate mitigation?
  
  • Is meaningful climate change mitigation still possible if artificial changes are promised as solutions to the climate crises? Firstly, when mitigation is modelled over longer periods of time, the use of cheaper climate engineering later in the century might be preferred over more expensive mitigation costs at present or in the near future. Secondly, this choice of waiting until later to mitigate climate change can be particularly attractive at a political level, slowing down policymakers’ near-term efforts. 

• Moral corruption: does climate engineering reflect a self-serving interest in avoiding politically difficult transitions away from fossil fuels?
  
  • The availability of climate engineering may be used as an argument by current generations to believe that they do not need to mitigate more rapidly now, thus passing the burden onto the next generation.

• Hubris: can climate engineering be justified by limited human foresight?
  
  • Climate engineering seems to reflect an attitude of control or dominance over nature, to make it serve human beings. Researchers and ethicists consider that our current knowledge does not support some of the assumptions made about the possibility of achieving control over e.g., the global carbon cycle, while underestimating the harmful effects this could have.

3. Schedule

Applications until 23rd July at 23.59 CEST. The result of the selection process will be given by 31st July 2023. A contract will be signed in the week following the communication of selection results.

The artwork needs to be available to Ecsite and relevant science centres as part of the logistical development of the installation, upon signature of the contract.

The artwork will be displayed in the TechEthos installation in Austria & Sweden between September and November 2023. It will also be displayed in the online version, which will remain available for five years after the closure of the project (December 2028). Additionally, the artwork will be used as part of TechEthos communication activities until the end of the project (31st December 2023)

TechEthos has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 101006249.