The series “The Dithering” uses 1980s Apple computers to contextualize climate apathy within the history of the techno-optimist imaginaries that prevail to the present. The assemblage sculptures incorporate a functional computer running subversive screensavers coded in C and Applescript. Using a visual language native to early computing and 90s Net art, the text and images dwell on the failures to adequately respond to climate science, which first became widely publicized in the same time period by the creation of the IPCC in the late 80s, and the release of the first Climate Assessment report in 1990.

The interactive works include an exploration of the first IPCC Assessment Report, published in 1990, whose pages have been reconstructed in HTML 1.0 and may be viewed in an early browser. The various software artworks plot strange attractor models, satellite imagery, and text that articulate ethical quandaries at the intersection of technology and climate.

The title, The Dithering, has a double meaning. There is the familiar technical meaning given by the famous Atkinson dithering algorithm, originally developed by Apple, to display images on the early 1-bit monochrome Mac. The series borrows another meaning, coined by sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson in the novel 2312, which historicizes the early 21st century’s tragically inadequate response to the climate crisis as the “decades of dithering”. By situating 90s climate science on the desktop of a popular computer from the same time period, it becomes more visceral how many years have been spent dithering on it.

The Dithering was first developed as a browser emulation of a Macintosh II with System 7.1; Generative AppleScript code traces a strange attractor on the desktop with the file icons; Custom applications written in C plots generative compositions using strange attractor models, semiotic diagrams, textual excerpts and images of Greenland glacier collapse; Images and text from the 1990 IPCC Climate Assessment report are reproduced in HTML 1.0 and viewed in Netscape; Miscellaneous digital artifacts from 1980s to present.

>> View the emulation live here.

The complete project was released on Verseworks in 2024.