Weather Worlds at UNFCCC COP24
NYU ITP/IMA · Fall 2018
Co-taught by Chris Woebken and Karolina Sobecka
Food systems and waste become starting points for public engagement proposals that connect everyday experience with climate politics in preparation for COP24.
Student work & course documentation
Student projects & descriptions
Selected student projects · Fall 2018
Proposals and prototypes developed at NYU ITP/IMA.
#WatchingCOP24
Sarah Schoengold · 2018
A proposed portrait and social media campaign connecting people affected by climate decisions with COP24. The presentation traces public-engagement research, field tests, a participation poster and a website prototype.
Trash Prints
Arnav Wagh · 2018
A proposal to map conference waste through the photographs and knowledge of sanitation workers and volunteers. A New York map prototype tests how waste and the labor of cleaning it up could become visible to the public.
Galaxy of Personal Food Waste
Effy Fan · 2018
An interface that turns daily reports of food waste into a shared visualization. Tested at ITP, the prototype uses clusters of colored circles to make individual patterns part of a collective picture.
Course & program documentation
Course outline
Food systems and waste become starting points for public engagement proposals that connect everyday experience with climate politics in preparation for COP24.
ITPG-GT.2992 · 7 weeks · 2 credits · Chris Woebken — Co-instructor · elective · graduate and undergraduate · Karolina Sobecka — Co-instructor · Pablo Suarez — Visiting instructor · Course consultation partner: Red Cross Climate Center · Course syllabus · Student projects & process materials · Course description
Weather Worlds at UNFCCC COP24
- Fall 18 at NYU ITP/IMATaught by Karolina Sobecka and Chris Woebken
Weather Worlds is a studio course that explores the role that design plays in public engagement on climate disruption. In this outcome-focused course the students will design pop-up public engagement interventions for the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP24), which will take place in December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The designs will be created in consultation with Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. The aim is to create blueprints for design approaches that can be adapted and replayed in different contexts and settings to create interventions sensitive to and inclusive of local challenges and participation. A handoff that includes a local re-interpretation of the design is a key aspect of this approach.
In this semester’s Weather Worlds studio we will focus on the impacts of climate change on food systems and vice versa - on the impact of our food systems on climate. We will design interventions through which participants confront how by simply eating they connect to supply chains, networks, and institutions that extend well beyond their families, communities or countries. Specifically the interventions will connect the international COP conference participants with the local polish food-system-and-climate-impact intersections. Understanding the paths that the carbon we ingest takes through the myriad material configurations and their sociotechnical orderings exposes the fundamental interconnections between the matter of our bodies, carbon emissions impacts on climate, and the agricultural, infrastructural, consumption, valuation and information systems that we have put in place. It further lets us consider what can be done about it, from local context-specific issues to global policy.
The partnership with the humanitarian sector will broaden and amplify the impact of this project, facilitating and developing engagements worldwide. This course produces a Weather Worlds platform that will investigate forms of experimental pedagogy, communication, and participation in engaging the public and multiple stakeholders on issues linked to climate disruption.
Course website