Rory Hyde 

Meet Your Energy Avatar

Mediamatic, Amsterdam, 2012

With Katja Novitskova

About

‘We once had a very direct relationship to our energy use, as with most animals today, it was directly related to our metabolic rate. Asleep we require about 90 watts of energy to ‘run’, to subsist in the Amazon as a hunter gatherer requires about 250 watts. With the rise of civilisation and technology, the modern middle class human in the developed world requires around 11,000 watts to live, which, as physicist Geoffrey West “is more watts than a blue whale … the biggest animal that has ever existed.”

Today we associate guilt with our energy footprints. In the post-carbon world of New Order we may instead embrace our animal avatars, giving them names and identities of their own. Come and introduce yourself.’

Meet Your Energy Avatar is a full-scale blue whale made of neon wire as part of the exhibition New Order: Energy, Economy, Art.

Thanks to

Hsien Yu and Carlos for their hard work. Photos by Simone Schoutens.