Oculus

Studio Daniel Canogar is pleased to present Oculus, a generative animation that features the Novartis Pavillon zero-energy media fac¸ade in Basel, Switzerland. The Pavillon, built with a unique solar panel technology developed by iart studio, presents an artistic program curated by Martin Furler and Sabine Himmelsbach.

Oculus is a generative abstract animation that responds in real-time to data related to climate change. An algorithm, custom-designed by Studio Daniel Canogar, accesses a number of webpages that monitor different phenomena, including polar ice caps melting, carbon dioxide levels, active fire data and global temperature anomalies. Oculus’ animation references this data through four different versions of color-coded graphics, with a visual vocabulary that artistically reinterprets traditional climate change visualizations.
Thanks to the internet we have a more complete understanding of climate change. The data culled from myriads of data entry points around the planet is giving us a bigger and more detailed picture of what is happening to our global ecosystem; however, the vast amount of information creates representational challenges. Oculus’ algorithmic animation moves beyond the hard numbers and structured graphics of climate-change data, and instead creates a more emotional and sensorial experience of this climate information.