EcoArtTech will be demonstrating their Environmental Risk Assessment Rover-­AT (ERAR­AT) at Purchase College, SUNY, Purchase, NY each evening at dusk on 3/27, 3/28, and 3/29, 2008.

Environmental Risk Assessment Rover-­AT, Version 1.0, 2008: “Sooner rather than later, one comes up against the law that so long as risks are not recognized scientifically, they do not exist–at least not legally, medically, technologically, or socially, and they are thus not prevented, treated or compensated for. No amount of collective moaning can change this, only science. Scientific judgment’s monopoly on truth therefore forces the victims themselves to make use of all the methods and means of scientific analysis in order to succeed with their claims.” -German risk theorist Ulrich Beck

ERAR­AT is a mobile, solar- and GPS-powered, networked video installation that will accumulate and aggregate the environmental threats and risks faced by the population in its immediate location. ERAR-AT performs the difficulty of perceiving, evaluating, and understanding risk scenarios and presents an assessment of its given locale by producing a unique fourteen-tiered threat level embedded live within video projections onto local natural and architectural surfaces.

What kind of local and global environmental risks do you face everyday? How far is the closest superfund site or nuclear power plant or agribusiness? How do the 148 industrial chemicals already in every American human body interact with the synthetic hormones and antibiotics in the dairy products we eat? How many chemicals are in human breast milk? How do the chemicals in your toothpaste interact with the pesticides on your food? Why has modernity, which was supposed to create a sense of security, produced more anxiety and threats than ever? Can scientific data and research help us understand the “riskiness” of contemporary life?

ECOARTTECH is Christine Nadir & Cary Peppermint ERAR Programming & Research Assistant: Colin Twomey.

ERAR-AT is part of the Neuberger Museum of Art’s Off the Grid Exhibition, March 30 - June 1, 2008. “Off the Grid” features works that subvert and circumvent conventional infrastructures. Co-presented by the Neuberger Museum of Art and free103point9 and curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tianna Kennedy, and Tom Roe.

Participating artists: Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen, EcoArtTech, eteam, Max Goldfarb, Louis Hock, Nina, Katchadourian, Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Trevor Paglen, Temporary Services, Seth Weiner, Bart Woodstrup