Data Manifestation: Merging the Human World & Global Climate Change

How can we break down the psychological boundaries which impede people from engaging in the issue of climate change? This paper is focused on the opportunities afforded by the practice of data manifestation; the communication of quantitative information through objects, installations, and sensory experiences. Through an analysis of two data manifestation projects, a series of techniques are presented which address the boundaries that separate people from global climate change in the areas of scale, geography, time, and environmental philosophy. These projects convert data to a human (versus global) scale, transport data from far off lands into our spaces, bring the future consequences of climate change into our present, and disrupt the philosophical separation between the human and non-human world. Data manifestation is further considered in the context of the relevant psychology literature focused on psychological distance.