Marina Zurkow & James Schmitz:
The Breath eaters
Video Projection
The Breath Eaters (2022) is an animated, custom software work by Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz that visualizes CO2 pollutants and other greenhouse gases produced by wildfires and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by a Midjourney image of a world map and presented as a live, three-channel generative composition, the work demonstrates how pollution is carried into the upper atmosphere and across the globe on wind currents. The Breath Eaters broadcasts real-time data from NASA’s fire detection systems, the World Resources Institute’s global fossil fuel power plant database, and NOAA’s global forecast system.
Bio
Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz have collaborated since 2021 on data-driven, generative artworks focused on the environment. Zurkow is a media artist exploring near-impossible intersections of nature and culture. She employs technologies like software, animation, audio, food, and biomaterials to foster intimate multispecies and geophysical connections. As a founding member of initiatives such as Dear Climate, Making the Best of It: Nimble Foods for Climate Change, Climoji, and Investing in Futures, Zurkow actively engages in collaborative projects. She is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital. Schmitz is an artist and technologist investigating the expressive intersections of art, data, and science. He develops open-source software tools and frameworks for artists and the creative coding community, including the Python Processing framework, py5. Schmitz earned a Master’s degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and was a 2019/20 Research Resident at ITP.