Ireland’s environment is under pressure from issues like pollution, land use, and climate change. While environmental data is available, we often struggle to engage with it in meaningful ways. At the same time, media visuals can overwhelm rather than inspire action. Our project responds to this gap by gathering and sharing examples of how artists are already using technology and creative design to translate environmental data into multisensory experiences. This includes approaches that allow people not only to see, but also to hear, touch, smell, or even taste environmental information. Through an open-access database, toolkits, and learning resources, we aim to support artists, educators, and community groups who want to explore or apply these innovative methods for public engagement and environmental awareness. Grounded in practice-based research, our project turns existing knowledge and artistic practices into accessible tools for wider use.
About SEED
Exploring how Irish environmental data can be communicated through all five senses to inspire public understanding and action.
SEED (Sensory Experiences of Environmental Data) is an interdisciplinary project, between communications, environmental geography and engineering. It explores how environmental data can be communicated through the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.
Ireland produces a wide range of environmental data through monitoring systems, sensors and open public datasets. While this data is essential for research and policy, it is most often communicated visually, through charts, dashboards or reports, which can limit how people engage with it.
SEED focuses on how environmental data can be translated into sensory and experiential forms, allowing people to encounter data not only by seeing it, but also by hearing it, touching it, smelling it, or experiencing it in embodied or physical ways.
Environmental data plays a central role in understanding environmental change, but there is often a disconnect between the availability of data and how it is experienced or understood by wider publics.
Research shows that there is a wealth of environmental data available, and that it can be communicated in engaging ways to audiences using novel communication forms. SEED aims to provide examples of how novel communication can engage audiences by exploring creative and multi-sensory approaches that move beyond visualisation alone.
By engaging multiple senses, SEED supports alternative and inclusive ways of communicating environmental data that can be:
- more accessible to non-specialist audiences
- inclusive of different sensory abilities
- grounded in artistic and technical practice rather than abstract theory
The project does not generate new datasets. Instead, it focuses on how existing environmental data is communicated, shared and interpreted.
SEED is grounded in practice-based research and builds on existing artistic and technical work in this area.
The project brings together and makes available:
- an open-access database of artists and practitioners who have worked creatively with environmental data across the five senses
- learning resources, including video tutorials on sourcing and working with environmental datasets, and introductory guides to tools commonly used in this work
- a practical toolkit for artists and educators, offering guidance on working with environmental data, sensors and creative technologies
- a practical toolkit for policymakers and experts who wish to support these novel practicesThese resources are designed to support artists, educators and groups who want to explore environmental data in sensory and creative ways, without assuming advanced technical expertise.SEED focuses on documenting, sharing and translating existing knowledge and practice into accessible resources that can be reused, adapted and built upon over time.