Greg Niemeyer’s work focuses on mediations between individuals, communities and environments. These mediations rely on data manifestations. Data manifestations are materializations of abstract data in the way people can feel. Born in Switzerland in 1967, Niemeyer studied Classics and Photography. He started working with new media when he arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1992. He received his MFA from Stanford University in New Media in 1997. At the same time, he founded the Stanford University Digital Art Center. In 2001 he was appointed at UC Berkeley as a Professor for New Media in Art Practice. He co-founded and directed the Center for New Media, focusing on the critical analysis of the impact of new media on human experiences.
For more information, please visit https://www.gregniemeyer.com
We spoke with Greg recently about his art and activism.
ClimateMusic: Can you tell us a little about your recent projects, Ice Core Walk and The Metered Tide?
GN: With both projects I seek to materialize big climate data in poetic sound. Art is an important element in art-science-activist worlding because it connects the technical with the emotional, and because art can look beyond what is. The imaginative power of art can raise awareness and activate change. Only through this poetic language are we able to touch upon the complexity of the current crises, consider the many time scales at which they unfold, and hold the many different experiences that climate change has in store for us.
Ice Core Walk and The Metered Tide are both collaborations with several wonderful people, especially Chris Chafe. That’s part of the message, that we find people to work together with.
Ice Core Walk is a narrative experience, and the story is the story of this planet’s climate over the past 800 thousand years. In that story, humans play a small part at first, but suddenly, with the Industrial Revolution, we play a huge part. They say “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” but the climate history shows that humanity as we know it evolved in an exceptionally stable climate period. That period, the past 80,000 years, made major migrations and agriculture possible. To me, it seems like we contributed to the destabilization of that stable period, but with Ice Core Walk, you can experience the climate history through music, walking and natural history brought to life by the wonderful work and voice of Liz Carlisle.
The Metered Tide, to me, is really a love song for the Bay Area. I love how locals measured sea water levels here since 1854. This gives us a great record to work with, and we focus on the many dramatic events reflected in it. The Bay Area and all its beauty will radically change with rising sea levels. The music video addresses the likely loss of this wonderful landscape and the community it harbors. At the same time, the vigorous way in which Chris Chafe plays his cello at the waterline speaks to human resilience, perseverance and deep care.
ClimateMusic: How did your interest in climate topics begin and why did you start including them in your art?
GN: We often talk about greenhouse gases, so back in 2001 Chris Chafe and I made a project called “Oxygen Flute”. Oxygen Flute was really a greenhouse where we sonified the exchange of CO2 and oxygen among plants and visitors in real time. Any actual greenhouse is a great analogy for climate change, and in this one, you could hear the plants absorb CO2 and release oxygen to visitors. The planet is just like a greenhouse, but without doors: it’s a closed system, and we should listen to it very carefully, because there is no other place to go.
ClimateMusic: You have said that your work strives to “humanize cold hard data”. Can you explain that concept a bit more?
GN: Heidegger said in his “Question upon Technology” that technology can lead to exploitation or stewardship of nature. One condition of stewardship, he said, is to embrace a lyrical perspective on nature. I pursue that lyrical perspective on data to ensure the broadest reading of data. This broad reading is especially important climate change data, which affects us so deeply and in so many ways.
ClimateMusic: Your project The Metered Tide uses sea level data from over one hundred years of rising waters in San Francisco. How did you decide on the most compelling way to visualize this data? What was your process like?
GN: Looking at sea level data, we see that the effects of the tide mask the effects of sea water level rises. Every day, sea levels change far more because of the moon’s gravitational pull than they do because of sea level change. A deeper analysis is needed to subtract the tide from the rise, and so Chris Chafe and I chose to sonify changes in the patterns of storm surges rather than straight sea level data. These pattern changes, in the video, cause the camera angle to change, and one can feel that over time there are more storm surges, the going gets rougher. Climate change does not arrive in a neat package, it’s rather like a chaotic period of global climate following an extraordinarily long period of global climate stability.
ClimateMusic: How can data driven media projects like yours encourage action on climate change?
GN: We need to learn to pay attention to new things. The things we paid attention to so far, GDP for example, and the constant drive for productive gain, are not the things we need to pay attention to from now on. We need to shift our attention to new kinds of values, such as using less energy, traveling and driving less, and balancing things out more: net balance instead of net gain. Data driven projects can contribute to the shift in attention, because they can make us feel new kinds of values. With these values in our minds, we can make different kinds of decisions, for balance instead of gain.
ClimateMusic: What advice would you give to someone who wants to start getting involved in climate action?
GN: Prepare to be in it for the long haul. Make sure to start at home and build from there. While climate change is a global challenge, solutions always will be local. Climate change produces different challenges for different people. All these experiences are valid. If you’re young, make climate friends teams early and work together, don’t wait for adults to approve. My daughter is active in the Sunrise movement, which engages a whole new generation in direct actions. It’s essential that climate action is a “together” thing, not an “us versus them” thing.
ClimateMusic: Where can we learn more about the work that you’re doing?
GN: I just released a new music video about water resources and climate change at www.gregniemeyer.com/flowstobay. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
ClimateMusic: Thank you for talking with us!