Extrapolated Center For Atmospheric Research, 2015

Extrapolated Center for Atmospheric Research brought graduate students into an exchange with climate scientists through speculative design. Developed by Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery as part of CU Boulder’s Visiting Artist program, the project began with a database of ongoing research assembled in collaboration with scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

In a rapid prototyping workshop, students used this research to imagine tools and instruments for possible future conditions. Their proposals explored different responses to climate change: studying its effects, adapting to them, counteracting them or intervening in the climate itself. These speculative objects made the assumptions behind each approach tangible and available for discussion.

The prototypes then returned to NCAR’s research facilities. One proposal, a habitat for pikas, prompted a conversation about Chris Ray’s research on these animals as indicators of environmental change. The imagined habitat became a point of contact between a speculative proposal and the questions and methods of an existing scientific inquiry.

This movement from research to prototype and back to the research setting structured the project. Students interpreted scientific work through making, while placing their objects onsite opened another way to discuss how climate knowledge might shape future tools and responses.