Climate Disruption Awareness Generator (CDAG), aka "Sustainacuse", is an interactive, immersive installation integrating sensors and responsive systems with virtual and/or augmented reality technology to engagingly communicate sustainability and resilience content to a participatory audience. CDAG specificallyaddresses the Syracuse University Campus Sustainability Plan objective of analysis, behavior,communication, demonstration, and engagement. Constructed as part of a multidisciplinary course in the School of Architecture and the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the exhibition used the campus as a laboratory for sustainability by creating a participatory installation sited on the main campus library.
This project tested the use of human centric design thinking to consider the embodied energy and greenhouse gas production of the technology, engineering and architectural systems as they interact with everyday users and what could be used to mitigate consumption or promote sustainable energy usage. The project specifically explored how artificially-intelligent, responsive, and virtual reality (VR) systems could influence the relationship between the built environment, technological innovation, and energy consumption.
The power of this project lies in enabling the students to design a mechanism to explore and publicly communicate the relationship between future technology,sustainability, and resilience to their peers and the public through interactive nature of the installation in both the physical hub of the university and in the presence of the nextgeneration of storytelling technology (AR & VR).
