A Map of a Dream of the Future (AMDF) was a public art installation, an online environment, and a State-wide community-based art and education program. The data-driven installation used hundreds of native Tasmanian plants to create an spatial map of a future Tasmania. It was an enormous, living 3D graph, plotting the hopes and fears of a younger generation of Tasmanians and their attitudes towards climate change and sense of place.

At the heart of the project was the creation of an environmental version of The Political Compass. The political compass asks a series of questions, then plots the respondent on a graph showing their left/right and authoritarian/libertarian tendencies. With the help of statistician Tim Cotter, we created a set of questions that plotted respondents on a graph showing their attitude towards how to address climate change: nature / technology, authoritarian / libertarian, and optimism / pessimism. This questionnaire, along with an education kit and narrative developed with UTAS academics, was distributed to every primary school in Tasmania.

The resulting installation, a living hanging garden of native Tasmanian plants, is arranged entirely according to the resulting data from a sample of 100 students.

An explanation of the data visualisation

Download the installation guide