Using imagination to [dis]assemble our waterways
More than 2,000,000 Kentuckians depend on groundwater every day. Yet little is known about the water that runs beneath the Bluegrass: Which aquifers are most susceptible to contamination? Why? How does this affect us? And, conversely, how do our everyday actions impact the quality of our groundwater? Together, we can answer these questions.
Tuning In To the Bluegrass is part of Livestream, a larger civic engagement campaign that actively engages individuals, organizations and institutions across Kentucky in the cultivation of our waterways. By harnessing the power of art, science, and technology, Public Works in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Quality constructed a dynamic network that collects and translates groundwater data from across Kentucky into interactive soundscapes that manifest as public art installations and educational outreach programs–such as the Tuning Into The Bluegrass Workshop. In addition to challenging people’s perceptions of water, this provocative platform actively engages individuals, organizations and institutions across Kentucky in the cultivation of our waterways.
Public Works for, with, and in a diversity of demographics and across disciplines to catalyze creative civic engagement. We work with the assumption that every environment is a classroom and every classroom is a conversation that informs the way we perceive the world and consequently, ourselves. By harnessing design as a means to ask questions, we investigate, [dis]assemble and [re]frame everyday environments as adaptive interfaces. In this context, doubt becomes the primary vector for critical thinking that interrogates the authority and aesthetics of what we’ve come to know as common sense. Each design is, therefore, an opportunity to exchange knowledge, advance critical discourse and [re]negotiate the boundaries of Possibility. In other words, to [un]learn.
