Keeping Our Cool
Diego Trujillo Pisanty
Keeping our cool is an interactive artwork that can only be seen by members of the public willing to invest a significant amount of effort in engaging with the piece. The installation is composed of a series of plates that have been printed on using thermochromatic ink, a type of pigment that disappears above 31°C (90°F). For the public to see the printed texts and graphics they must cool down the installation by blowing air onto it with paper fans. Cooling the artwork implies a physical struggle through which the effect of individual action is embodied. The installation will be much more easily cooled when several people fan it as a collective. Cooling the installation results in making visible images and texts based on research about the effects of climate change within this century.
This exhibit was made possible through the support of Servicios Total Show for their aluminum manufacturing expertise and Beto Olsi for his valuable fabrication assistance.
About the Team
Diego Trujillo Pisanty (Mexico City,1986) is an artist, designer, and researcher working with information as both a concept and a material. Trujillo Pisanty obtained an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London (2012) and has been thrice awarded a Young Creators fellowship from the Mexican Fund for Culture and Arts to produce electronic artworks. In 2015 he received an Honorable Mention in Hybrid Art at the Prix Ars Electronica for his piece This Tape will Self-Destruct. He has worked as Research Associate at Newcastle University and is currently a part-time lecturer in Technology and Digital Media at Centro University in Mexico City where he focuses on design and interactive objects. Diego has exhibited his works in Ireland, the UK, France, the USA, Peru and Mexico. He has also received worldwide press coverage.
Dr. Jonás Aguirre-Liguori is an evolutionary biologist. He obtained his PhD from the Institute of Ecology, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2017). He recently completed a postdoc at the University of California, Irvine (2019-2021). He is currently a full-time lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, where he studies the evolutionary genomics of domesticated plants and their wild relatives, including teosinte, pumpkin, and grapes. He is currently developing an approach that uses multiple sources of genomic, ecological, and climate data to understand how species will respond to climate change, as well as to identify populations that should be prioritized for conservation and management. He is part of InbioCC, a collaborative group of Mexican Scientists working on climate change, whose objective is to generate information, conscientize the public and push public policies that would mitigate the impacts of climate change.