Vibrant Fields is an arts-based-research project focusing on understanding climate change through artistic means. The project team consists of Bernhard Sommer, Zeynep Aksöz Balzar, Galo Moncayo Asan and Mark Balzar, who are based in the Institute of Architecture in University of Applied Arts in Department for Energy Design. This project is funded by FWF PEEK.

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The Influence of climatic conditions has various effects on population and population density. We can observe a direct relationship between the world distribution of urban sprawl and the respected isotherms. It is part of the argument that these isotherms are constantly moving and put tension on the current state of urbanization. Human society can only put two strategic logics into the process: Moving with the isotherm or adapting to the new climatic conditions.

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Vibrant Fields hypothesizes the urban nature to be an amalgam of biological and artificially produced and technologically mediated matter that share a symbiotic life cycle within the same environment. Only by systematically understanding their relationships, we can contribute to a holistic image illuminating the influence of climate change. The main question becomes how atmospheric effects influence the living and non-living participants of the urban realm and how will they adapt to climate change.

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The project aims to unravel principles of adaptation of urban metabolism as a response to energy flows. This will be achieved through observing biological and technological components of cities under extreme climatic pressure within distinct isotherms. Accordingly, dynamic events of exchange in between the components of the urban nature will be analyzed as flows of energy and information. We aim to capture stimuli, impulses, and catalysts by reducing the information to streams of measured data and by increasing the resolution of urban information.

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New ways of measuring urban events will be investigated, by developing an apparatus for capturing the energy flows and transforming this information into artistic expression. Certain information such as ultrasonic waves or infrared waves which are very important in animal and botanical life are not in the human sense-able spectrum at all. Phenomena such as climate change are hard to understand, as it can only be perceived. Art has the power to augment the human experience by extending the limits of sensory impressions. In this sense data will not only be observed, collected and processed, yet, will be translated into a unique and intriguing experience. By designing transmedia art that is in continuous flux, the adaptive behavior shaped by the information of distinct environments will be explored.

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Consequently, a new method of surveying the urban realm is proposed, by perceiving the built environment and its inhabitants as equal vibrant matter. Accordingly, a new theoretical cartography of interdependent systems will be established, synergizing cross-disciplinary methods of science, art, and architecture in relation to society, biology, and technology.