Styrofoam Ethics

The series The Dithering (You Are Here) extends Dev Harlan’s work with emulated desktops to contextualize climate apathy within the history of techtopian imaginaries which have largely been dismissive or hostile towards climate science. The work begins with an exploration of the first IPCC Assessment Report, published in 1990, whose pages have been reconstructed within an emulated 90’s era Macintosh system. Harlan has also labored to produce code under this system which generates thought provoking algorithmic artworks incorporating strange attractor models, satellite imagery and text. Mining ethical quandaries at the intersection of technology and climate he plots epithets and thought regimes as hypothetical trajectories in which “You Are Here” marks a moving waypoint for the ever fraught present.

A browser emulation of a Macintosh II with System 7.1 containing images and text extracted from the 1990 IPCC Climate Assessment report; Generative AppleScript code plots a strange attractor on the desktop with the file icons; Custom applications written in C create generative compositions using strange attractor models, semiotic diagrams, textual excerpts and images of Greenland glacier collapse; Miscellaneous digital artifacts from 1980s to present.