Extrapolated Center For Atmospheric Research, 2015
As part of the Visiting Artist program at CU Boulder, The Extrapolation Factory paired a group of graduate students with the ongoing climate research at The National Center for Atmospheric Research. In collaboration with NCAR scientists, we created a database of ongoing climate research. Then, in a rapid prototyping workshop, the students developed a series of speculative tools and instruments that might compliment NCAR's future research focus. As a way to inspire the students, we presented this array of approaches for speculative tools:
• studying climate impacts
• accentuating climate impacts
• avoiding something associated with climate impacts
• for reengineering climate
• counteracting climate impacts
• leveraging climate impacts
Rather than making products to be re-contextualized in a shop or marketplace we took this opportunity to situate the tools onsite at NCAR's research facilities.
One proposal in particular, a Pika habitat, started an interesting conversation about Chris Ray's research on Pikas as an indicator species for climate change. The scientists have studied Pika feces by collecting it and measuring the stress hormone level contents as an early indicator for climate change.
More documentation on flickr.