Airways

Dr Vicki Kerr in collaboration with Chris Batterton and Micah Livesay
Credits: Animation – Marcel Bellvé, Video Postproduction – Toby Plowman

Airways (2021) is an immersive video and sound installation drawing attention to the profound impact of air travel on our environment.

There is no other human activity that emits as much CO2 over such a short period of time as aviation, thereby significantly contributing to the acceleration of global warming, releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Dr Vicki Kerr is an artist, academic and former air traffic controller. ‘Airways’ speculates on the environmental impact of aviation and more broadly ways in which the atmosphere is permeated at every layer by technologies of communication, transportation and scientific research. The immersive installation uses mathematics of quantum wave superposition based on aircraft movement data in New Zealand and dynamic acoustic exchanges (humans and birds) to better our understanding of habitat connectivity and entanglements of species/human/non-human systems and networks. The art work calls attention to how we have moved away from adapting to the environment to adapting the environment itself and how our actions are linked to climate change.

The development of Airways was supported with seed funding from What if Climate Change was Purple?