Anti-Glacier

Anti-glacier is an online work which gathers data on current news headlines, local weather, and global climate, in order to graphically visualise our fragmented attention. Named after Kurt Vonnegut's now-ironic assertion in his novel Slaughterhouse-5 that it's as easy to stop wars as it is to stop glaciers, Anti-Glacier juxtaposes the rapid turnover of national news stories with the slower rhythm of daily temperature changes in the East Midlands, and the literally glacial pace of arctic sea ice melt and worldwide atmospheric temperature increases.

The results are daily, weekly and monthly data maps, which will grow over the course of one year to encompass a wealth of data and information, gathered from Loughborough weather stations, online news sites, and environmental monitoring programmes.

The work is no longer being updated with live data, but has been archived here. 

James Bridle is an artist, writer, and publisher based in London, UK. His book New Dark Age was published by Verso in 2018, whilst his writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, Domus, Cabinet, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Observer and many others. His artworks and installations have been commissioned and exhibited worldwide and on the internet, including the New Aesthetic research project which has spurred debate and creative work across multiple disciplines.