Andrea Polli
Andrea Polli is a digital media artist living in New York City. Polli’s work addresses issues related to science and technology in contemporary society. Her projects often bring together artists and scientists
from various disciplines.
WORK
title
Heat the the Heartbeat of the City
2004
a short work description
Heat and the Heartbeat of the City: Central Park Climate Change in Sound According to a 1999 report published by the Environmental Defense Fund, New York City will be dramatically impacted by global warming in the near future.
Average temperatures in New York could increase by one to four degrees
fahrenheit by 2030, and up to ten degrees by 2100. According to the
Metropolitan East Coast Assessment, the impacts of these changes on this major metropolitan area will be great.
Heat and the Heartbeat of the City is a series of sonifications (musical
compositions created by directly translating data to sound) that illustrate
these dramatic changes focusing on the heart of New York City and one of the city’s first locations for climate monitoring, Central Park. As you listen to the compositions, you will travel forward in time at an accelerated pace and experience an intensification of heat in sound.
The data sonified is actual data from summers in the 1990’s and projected data for the summers of New York in the 2020’s, 50’s, and 80’s using an atmospheric model of the city that is one of the most detailed models of any urban area. All data has been formatted especially for the creation of sonifications.
scientific collaborators: Cynthia Rosenzweig, David Rind, and Richard Goldberg, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University