Eco-visualization: combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption

Can creative visualizations of real time energy consumption patterns trigger more ecologically responsible behavior? Media art that displays the real time usage of key resources such as electricity offers new strategies to conserve energy in the home and workplace. This paper details the development of a public art project created for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications that measures electricity usage in real time for the purpose of education and curtailment of power usage. A version of this piece will be on view in the exhibition, Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary, a component of the 2007 Creativity and Cognition conference.