Climate change has become hard to talk about, creating a major barrier to collective action even amongst scientists and nature lovers. This has driven our explorations into media for bringing people together around climate-related data via designing arts-based data experiences that might break through this hesitation.
This experimental talk invites the audience to perform CO2 emissions through body percussion: clapping, stomping, tapping legs, and more. We want to explore how embodiment and sonification can help us feel the data, not just see it.
We will build on embodied data representation research and encodings developed for Data Drums, a live Brazilian percussion performance that won a 2026 Data Sonification Award. Through the distinct rhythmic traditions of Brazil, India, and the US we will explore and perform national, per-capita, and sectoral emission levels. The idea of international cooperation across countries will be introduced through syncopation and dissonance.
Through these playful encodings we aim to build a shared re-understanding of why bringing people together around climate data requires not just better visualizations, but better experiences. We aim to build the evidence base about how and why arts-based approaches to sharing climate data can re-invite in those that have checked out from action.