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 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 an interactive artwork using browser emulation of the Macintosh II. The desktop was hacked with AppleScript code to trace strange attractor algorithms with the file icons. Custom applications written in C also plot generative compositions using strange attractor models, semiotic diagrams, textual excerpts and images of Greenland glacier collapse. The work also included excerpts from the 1990 IPCC Climate Assessment report reformatted in HTML 1.0 and viewable in Netscape or Mosaic. The complete project was released on Verseworks in 2024.