Fractures & Fissures

2018

Fractures & Fissures are part of an ongoing project to weave interpretations of historical climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) into abstracted landscapes.

Much of this NOAA database aggregates temperature data along politically defined boarders. How we aggregate and represent data shapes the story the data tells. We chop things up and break things down into smaller pieces to try to understand, and there are politics, power, and assumptions embedded in these representations. For Fractures and Fissures I sought out temperature data not explicitly defined by the boarders of a settler colonial state. This left me with hemispheres, land and ocean.

Each Fracture is an interpretation of average annual temperature that adds up to the full globe, but each is divided into multiple panels reflecting varied ways global temperature data has been aggregated by NOAA: 1) land, ocean; 2) northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere; 3) n. hemisphere land, n. hemisphere ocean, s. hemisphere land, s. hemisphere ocean. The data is interpreted as vertical lines moving from left to right/past to present. These abstracted landscapes draw compositional elements from breaks and shifts in the earth as well as from horizon lines, reflections, and sun rises/sun sets. They are stacked- one part of the world holding up another: our human life on land resting on, putting pressure on the ocean, or the global north on the shoulders of the global south.

Each Fissure is an interpretation of 137 years climate data for the full globe. While the data is the same from piece to piece, the numerical information has been interpreted differently, each panel using a progressively simplified color code. They too explore how changes in representation shift how we see and what we know and formally reference sky, horizon lines, sunrises and sunsets.

All Photos: Miranda Brandon

Fractures

Fracture 1

137 years annual average temperature for the globe (land, ocean); hand-woven biodynamic cotton dyed with plant and insect derived dyes and mineral mordants

54”x54”

2018

Fracture 2

137 years annual average temperature for the globe (northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere); hand-woven biodynamic cotton dyed with plant and insect derived dyes and mineral mordants

54”x54”

2018

Fracture 3

137 years annual average temperature for the globe (n. hemisphere land, n. hemisphere ocean, s. hemisphere land, s. hemisphere ocean); hand-woven biodynamic cotton dyed with plant and insect derived dyes and mineral mordants

54”x54”

2018