Photo: Cristina Tarquini, Shapeshifting Energy 2022 © Studio Crtq

über Cristina Tarquini

Italian media artist and designer Cristina Tarquini studied Art Direction for Advertising at the IED - European Institute of Design in Milan and Barcelona and did a Masters in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins in London, UK. The Paris-based artist works as a creative technologist and is an expert in visual storytelling. Her work creates immersive experiences at the intersection of digitality and physical space, art and technology. Her projects have been exhibited internationally, including at Somerset House and Ars Electronica, and featured in Best of Google Design 2020.

Website of Cristina Tarquini

Navigating through time

Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg, Waltrop

For Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg in Waltrop, artist and designer Cristina Tarquini is developing a video and sound installation that will be presented in the ship’s lift machine hall. Navigating through time addresses the infrastructural adaptations of water transportation routes and means in a globalizing world. Tarquini draws on scientific datasets for her work and translates them into fluid images of animated point clouds.

For her video installation in the ship lift, Cristina Tarquini uses selected data sets on global container shipping and water research to develop an audiovisual narrative. Her work shows the connection between major overseas ports, addresses the increase in freight transport on the oceans, and visualizes data sets from the German Federal Institute of Hydrology, which research the consequences of extreme weather events for the Rhine and Rhine-Herne Canal. Logistical, economic, and ecological themes can thus be experienced in the ship lift through artistic means.

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Shapeshifting Energy

Kraftwerk Ermen & Engels, Engelskirchen

For the Ermen & Engels power plant, Cristina Tarquini is developing Shapeshifting Energy, which explores the consequences of human-induced global warming, particularly on the water cycle, in a regional and European context. In addition to health and the environment, this also affects the generation of renewable energy from hydropower, a form of energy for which the region is known today primarily through the Aggertalsperre dam, but which can also be found historically in the power plant of the former cotton mill, which was once powered by water.

As an immersive video and sound installation, Shapeshifting Energy has an interactive interface and thus increasingly encourages participation. In the museum’s turbine basement, individual scenarios can be simulated and experienced in a playful way, such as how the rise in temperature affects the aggregate states of water. To illustrate the changes associated with active human intervention in the hydrologic cycle, she uses scientific data sets. As part of the immersive installation, this data is projected into the museum’s historic space using Point Cloud animation and graphics.

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