sun_set_provision (2020 ~ ) is an ongoing work which generates an evolving seascape in real time within a web browser. Sunsets and sunrises are images with multiple associations across histories- from longstanding pagan or religious rituals to the dawning of a new age, often heralded in marketing campaigns. Here they are presented in their optimal format: outside of any given time or location.

This altering image is rendered live by a game engine, with variations of every aspect- colours, wave, movement and atmospheric thickness- influenced by extensive data fed from a Romanian-built environmental air quality monitor, called the uRadMonitor. It is part of a networked system developed to independently monitor environmental conditions and air pollution initiated against the backdrop of multiple disastrous environmental cover-ups and rising climate change denial. Over 300 units monitor conditions across the globe outside of official information channels feeding the date into a live map.  Values of openness and accessibility pervade in a real- time presentation of environmental conditions for everyone to see.

This altering seascape is a modelled reality; mirroring, abstracting and heightening unseen aspects of the physical world. The greater the volume of carbon dioxide, micro-particles, radiation and other pollutants, the more spectacular a scene is rendered. The rich violets and piercing yellows that can be displayed at any given moment recall the mesmerising and multi-instagrammed sunsets seen in heavily polluted metropolises around the world in recent years.

In other versions of this work the uRad, the computer, the screen and the viewer physically share a single location, each breathing in the same space. The live scene presented here is determined by an atmospheric monitor currently located within the artist’s home/studio.

Significantly, the title of the work, ‘sunset provision’ refers to a known legal clause that specifies a particular law will cease to have effect on a specific date. ‘Sunsetting’ is a term often used in professional technology circles when a feature or website is phased out in software lifecycles. Both of these denominations lead us to envisage time as being up and in turn to towards the unsustainability of our modern world. Within the pause we are currently undergoing, there may be an opportunity to collectively ‘take stock.’ At the end of every day there lies the promise of something vastly better.

Yuri Pattison (born Dublin) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include “to-do, doing, d̶o̶n̶e̶”, mother’s tankstation limitd, London (2019), “Trusted Traveller,” KunstHalle St. Gallen (2017), “sunset provision”, mother’s tankstation limited, Dublin (2016-17), “user, space”, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016), “Architectures of Credibility”, Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition, Berlin (2015) and “Free Traveller”, Cell Projects, London (2014). Pattison is the recent recipient of the Frieze Artist Award 2016.