Extreme Environments: Hong Kong's Art + Science Expeditions

Hong Kong’s Extreme Environments programme explores how student artists, researchers and scientists working together can collect and interpret environmental data using new forms of creativity and visualization. The programme promotes interdisciplinary research and discovery as an integral part of learning. The planet’s most remote landscapes are among the most fragile and endangered but also offer unique insights into a sustainable future. This project brings together teams from across the academic spectrum to help better understand issues that threaten nature and our cities. A groundbreaking experiment in transdisciplinary art+sci education, field research becomes a creative strategy and media art becomes a tool for scientific interpretation. To date, the expeditions have partnered with scientists in the Mojave Desert and Antarctica. Using computational sensing to collect a variety of datasets, interdisciplinary teams of students from such fields as art, business, engineering, natural science, and social science conduct research in remote locations. They then develop new media art projects that utilize new presentation technologies to offer innovative approaches to understanding climate change. The exhibitions present environmental data through new media artworks in diverse technologies like mobile game applications, light installations, interactive cinema, 3D immersive environments and kinetic sculpture.