Lines Favorite 

Date: 

Jan 1 2017

Location: 

Scotland

Located off the west coast of Scotland are the Outer Hebrides, an island chain where Finnish artists Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho decided to install their piece, Lines. The installation is composed of lines of light wrapped around buildings or hovering on a grass field. At high tide, the lights turn on, illuminating the serene landscape, and marking the height of future sea-level rise on the low-lying archipelago.
The simple yet striking installation reminds viewers of the catastrophic impact of rising sea levels, an issue particularly relevant to the Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre, where the installation is situated. Due to predicted storm surge sea levels, the centre can no longer develop on its existing site.

"After looking at the theme from various angles, we concluded we’d make an artwork discussing this very relevant issue in seaside communities around the world. Highlighting the future predictions of sea-level rise with LED visually resonates with contemporary consumer society, and at an individual level.

We were hoping to pinpoint an important issue by the means of art: Art carries the potential to convey complex ideas, concepts and scientific data in a powerful way that other mediums, like texts or graphs may fall short of."

Posted by abbytrott on

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Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Timeframe For change

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I think it is a very effective way of showing viewers and people how the rising sea level does affect them and their life. Seeing a line where your city or community will be under water at some point is a very simple and impressionable act of art. I think as their work spreads to different cities etc it will get more of a buzz, and start more conversations. But I do not know what kinda of actions this has resulted in or how it would activate the viewer to take action.