This insightful article is part of our special section, ‘Fine Arts & Exhibits,’ exploring how creativity can illuminate and inspire during challenging times.
Imagine a digital time-lapse created by the London-based artist studio, ScanLAB: A majestic saguaro cactus, a stoic emblem of resilience in the Sonoran Desert, slowly succumbs to the harsh conditions, its withered branches collapsing. These magnificent cacti, often living for over 150 years, typically endure scorching summers by conserving water from rainy seasons.
The vast Sonoran Desert, spanning over 100,000 square miles across Arizona, California, and northwestern Mexico, is renowned for its diverse array of uniquely adapted plant life, including the iconic saguaro. Yet, even these hardy species are now battling for survival amidst escalating temperatures and prolonged droughts.
“The Sonoran Desert has experienced its driest and hottest periods in recent memory, a trend projected to intensify,” explains Raul Puente-Martinez, a research botanist and curator at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. “We’re being forced to fundamentally reconsider how we nurture our plants as the climate shifts. I tell my colleagues at other botanical gardens that while they might not see these effects yet, it’s only a matter of time before it reaches their communities.”
Image: An abstract art installation features an intricate web of blue, green, yellow, and orange fibers, woven together in a captivating display. This piece, “Remembering the Future,” by fiber artist Janet Echelman, offers an abstract yet powerful visualization of climate change.
In response to these alarming changes, the Desert Botanical Garden commissioned ScanLAB to create a digital installation illustrating the climate’s impact on local flora, including the vulnerable saguaro. ScanLAB stands out among artistic collectives that leverage scientific data to visualize the climate crisis. Their goal isn’t to instill fear, but to translate complex environmental data into accessible and educational visual narratives.
To achieve this, ScanLAB utilized advanced 3D scanning technology and collaborated extensively with local photographers and scientists. They meticulously crafted time-lapse artworks of various locations within the botanical garden and across the wider Sonoran Desert. This included scanning blooming cacti within their London studio, with some locations revisited for an entire year to capture the subtle shifts. The team also incorporated visuals of expanding housing developments and stressed waterways, drawing attention to human-induced factors exacerbating environmental changes.
This autumn, these digital creations will be unveiled in “Framerate: Desert Pulse.” The exhibition reveals both the delicate vulnerability and enduring beauty of the region’s plant life, showcasing vibrant blooms unfurling and closing, and the continuous growth of plants. William Trossell, co-founder of ScanLAB, noted, “It offers a perception of time beyond our usual grasp. There’s a beautiful, intricate dance happening – cacti are breathing, moving, and constantly responding to their environment.”
While “Framerate” illuminates a future already unfolding in certain climates, other artists venture into scenarios where survival itself is a distant memory. A compelling example is Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s “Boreal Dreams” (2025), which premiered earlier this year at “Northern Lights” at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, Switzerland. This digital installation, accessible via an interactive website, presents simulations of the boreal forest at five distinct temperatures. It begins at ambient conditions and progresses to a chilling nine degrees Celsius, a point where the forest is depicted as “only a memory.” Drawing on extensive data from the Marcell Experimental Forest, a Minnesota research center dedicated to studying global warming’s impact, Steensen’s work powerfully visualizes bleak, future landscapes.
Image: Jakob Kudsk Steensen, the artist behind “Boreal Dreams,” is shown with his art. His digital installation, an interactive website, vividly portrays the boreal forest across five different temperature simulations.
Image: Visitors at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel had the unique opportunity to experience Steensen’s “Boreal Dreams” outdoors, watching the forest’s progression through various climate zones displayed on a large screen in a serene, green landscape at dusk.
While museum visitors could observe the forest’s climatic journey on an outdoor screen, the project’s interactive website offers a deeper, more personal experience. Users can navigate the simulated landscape at each temperature, delving into the stark realities of ecosystem decline as permafrost thaws, water vanishes, and species fade away. This immersive experience, complemented by a haunting soundtrack meant to evoke boreal forest dreams, cultivates a profound, visceral understanding of our changing climate.
Meanwhile, at the MIT Museum near Boston, fiber artist Janet Echelman presents a more abstract interpretation of climate change through her sculptural installation, “Remembering the Future” (2025). This intricate braided fiber piece, reminiscent of a vast three-dimensional web, is prominently displayed in the museum’s lobby, captivating passers-by. Collaborating with MIT oceanography professor Raffaele Ferrari, co-director of the institute’s Lorenz Center for climate research, Echelman translated climate data — spanning from the last ice age to current conditions and future projections — into a complex, geometric design.
Image: Within a modern glass building, a vibrant, multi-colored fiber sculpture by Janet Echelman hangs gracefully from the ceiling, its intricate design a visual representation of climate data. Echelman expressed her profound connection to the project, stating, “I am acutely aware of, and overwhelmed by, news about the climate.”
In an interview, Echelman shared her personal connection to the crisis: “I am acutely aware of, and often overwhelmed by, the constant stream of climate news. It feels as if data is inundating me, and I lack the tools to truly comprehend its meaning.”
To transform this complex emotional and intellectual landscape into a tangible visual experience, Echelman collaborated with Caitlin Mueller, an MIT associate professor of building technology. Mueller’s lab developed a sophisticated tool capable of modeling the sculpture’s intricate, net-like structure of knotted and intertwined fibers, mirroring the complexity of the climate data it represents.
Complementing the physical sculpture, Mueller also engineered an interactive digital tool, available via a museum kiosk and online. This tool offers audiences an exclusive look behind the creative process, demonstrating how she and Echelman meticulously designed the piece. Mueller describes it as “a high-fidelity digital twin of the sculpture, generated through our computational simulation, allowing you to orbit and pan through it to explore perspectives impossible to achieve physically.”
Echelman stresses the importance of viewer interaction: “You’re not merely observing the art; you’re invited to participate, to become a designer yourself,” she explains. “Ultimately, through our collective actions, we are all shaping the future.”
Extending this theme, Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz’s animated work, “The River is a Circle” (2025), is displayed on the fifth-floor terrace of the Whitney Museum. This piece challenges viewers to perceive past, present, and future as interwoven, coexisting realities.
Image: A compelling outdoor installation featuring a ship’s bow emerging from concrete, alongside a painting of maritime scenes. Marina Zurkow, co-creator of the animation “The River is a Circle,” emphasizes: “Things don’t have to be terrible if we don’t let them. We are part of climate systems, not passive subjects.”
This software-driven animation visually dissects the Hudson River, presenting a horizontal cross-section that reveals activity both above and below the surface. It dynamically illustrates tide levels, sunrise, and sunset—calculated in real-time from existing data—along with live marine traffic and current weather conditions sourced from external applications.
The artwork’s rich visuals incorporate elements such as Atlantic sturgeon and whimsical ‘doughnut’ shapes symbolizing police boats. Other elements appear as floating islands, adorned with iconic representations of New York’s history, from ancient Lenape settlements to modern-day landmarks. All these disparate visuals are woven together, deliberately disregarding chronological order.
The artists also introduce speculative future scenarios: “We included one terrible future, a ‘business as usual’ outcome, and one less dire,” Zurkow explains. The grim scenario depicts islands hosting walled, surveilled communities adrift on the water. Conversely, the more hopeful future showcases islands bearing symbols of renewable energy, like solar panels.
Zurkow clarifies the project’s underlying philosophy: “A purely positive future was never an option for this work; that’s simply not possible anymore. However, things aren’t destined to be catastrophic if we actively intervene. We are integral to climate systems, not merely passive observers.”