Robotic technology possessing a green thumb! Yeah that’s correct, one such robotic device is the Environmental Risk Assessment Rover (ERAR) by EcoArtTech. Co-founded in 2005 by Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint, EcoArtTech has been working with digital, networked, and sustainable technologies and contemporary environments to create art about the environmentality of modern life. But how does ERAR help our environment? This solar powered, GPS-oriented and networked video installation ERAR analyzes data from its surroundings, including air quality, local traffic accidents, and current terrorist warning levels. The rover then breaks its findings down into fourteen unique categories and projects them onto nearby natural surfaces.
It analysis issues like ‘What kind of local and global environmental risks do you face everyday?’, ‘How far is the closest superfund site or nuclear power plant or agribusiness?’, ‘How do the 148 industrial chemicals already in every American human body interact with the synthetic hormones and antibiotics in the dairy products we eat?’………and so on! Wonder if it is designed to work on rainy or cloudy days?
The Environmental Risk Assessment Rover is on display at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York until June 1, 2008, as part of free103point9’s fascinating and timely exhibition Off the Grid, a dialogue between thirteen contemporary artists and the dynamic between modern energy and consumption in the modern landscape.
It is meant to conceptually challenge conventional and commercial infrastructures. What an ideal upshot of technology and environment!
Via – Inhabitat
