Linda Cheung: What I like about AR tech
is that there is the potential to actually
take the data and visualize it in some way.
What would three feet or six feet
of sea-level rise look like
in your surrounding environment?
I chose Miami because I realized this is ground zero
for climate change here in the United States.
It's not in the far future.
By the end of the century,
Miami could be completely underwater.
I founded the nonprofit organization
called Before It's Too Late.
We use arts and technology to find creative ways to
educate people and inspire them
on different environmental issues.
We like to do a lot of different creative projects,
but probably the work that we do the most often is
augmented reality and public murals.
Having such a complex production
of augmented reality
was definitely a work in discovery.
It was like, all right, we need
definitely a muralist who knows how to paint,
we need some 3D artists and animators,
we need people who can program.
People can tell this was not just an afterthought.
This is, like, months of work to create something
that is at the maximum of art and tech.
Juan Carlos Gallo: What we're trying to do here is
we're trying to get the people
that interact with our murals
to actually take action.
AR just gives you an incredible palette,
an incredible canvas, that you can really
manifest almost anything into.
It does allow you to create another layer of reality
on top of what you see.
You bring up your phone,
and it's like a window into this other world.
And basically this mural's telling a story
about sea-level rise in Miami
and how we're gonna be affected here first.
In this mural you have two choices:
You can be the change, or you can make no change.
And if you make no change,
then what you end up seeing is
the dystopian future of Miami with sea-level rise,
with the city in decay,
but you can always go back and be the change,
and if you're the change
then you can actually live a life
sustainable with nature.
Cheung: What I try to do is always make sure that
even if it's an artistic experience,
it's grounded in the science.
Everything is obviously artistic, but it's possible.
Levente Juhasz: So, we are at Matheson Hammock Park
in Coral Gables, Florida.
Right now I am standing in water,
and I should not be standing in water.
Just a couple decades ago,
this area would have not been flooded,
even when it's high tide.
This is just one of many examples
where locals in South Florida can encounter
the effects of sea-level rise.
So, here at Matheson Hammock Park we are collecting
data specifically related to sea-level rise.
For example, at the GIS Center we have
unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with sensors, cameras,
so we can deploy these after any flood event
and we can map the area pretty soon
with very high accuracy.
Jennifer Fu: Florida International University is
one of the major research universities
in South Florida,
and we already have an existing large group
of interdisciplinary researchers
focusing on sea-level rise.
Our main role at the GIS Center is actually
to try to apply geospatial technology
to transform what the scientists come up with
into a more visual way so that decision-makers
and the public can digest them better.
Our sea-level rise application
was one of the first ones that came out
to visualize sea-level rise in South Florida.
We came up with a very simple way
of visualizing what's really gonna happen.
If you see this blue
that's occurring on the screen in your neighborhood,
then you know that's water coming.
I really admire Linda Cheung's work.
I think that when we can engage artists,
we can touch our human emotions
and our heart better.
Hers is more of an intuitive artist approach,
so I guess it's a combination
of art and science together
and to work towards a common goal.
Cheung: I think sometimes when there's an urgent need,
such as climate change, that can threaten
the entire fabric of society,
that's when artists start to step up and say,
"I'm not just gonna do art for art's sake anymore,
I have to do art for, you know, this issue."
When you can translate data points into experiences,
it starts to set in more.
I think that's the potential of this tech.