Critical Climate Machine: an exhibition by Gaëtan Robillard to combat climate misinformation using artificial intelligence

Initiated as part of Gaëtan Robillard's thesis in aesthetics and art sciences, Critical Climate Machine is a research-creation project designed to reveal and quantify the mechanisms of disinformation about global warming on social networks. The more disinformation is processed, the higher the temperature of the structure.

Through an immersive environment, this installation consists of a data sculpture, a sound piece and a visualization. Using an artificial intelligence algorithm, the sculpture analyzes a stream of false information collected live on social network X (Ex Twitter).

While the sculpture integrates and manifests this process, the visualization bears witness to the sculpture's changing temperature.

The artistic project is also part of a participatory approach

To produce the sound piece, two workshops were organized with students from the Université Gustave Eiffel and pupils from the Lycée international de l'Est Parisien, to record a sound work in the form of a dialogue between climate skeptics and scientific refutations. The dialogues were reinterpreted and spatialized using a generative algorithm designed for musical improvisation.

From time to time, the chanted words are broadcast into the exhibition space, divided into eight sources.

Critical Climate Machine acts as a counterpoint to the determinism of technical automation, proposing an ethic of data processing at the intersection of physical and informational space.

Mediation around the exhibition based on the "Game of refutation" between January 15 and 19, from 1pm to 2pm.

During workshops with students, a card game was specially designed for the project. The Rebuttal Game is a deck of seventy cards that allows players to identify and refute misleading climate information in a deliberative mode. While based on scientific data, the cards have been created on the basis of systematic rebuttals of skeptical arguments about global warming. The game facilitates structured debate among participants.