Concept
This interactive work transforms aviation infrastructure into environmental poetry through a rigorous constraint-based system. Working like magnetic poetry with three-letter airport code tiles, each line is assembled by concatenating IATA codes, then redividing the letter sequence into meaningful words. The poem cannot exist without reactivating the environmental crisis it describes—each line draws on the high-emission infrastructure of global air travel, which produces disproportionate carbon output per passenger mile.
Formal Innovation
Following traditions of constraint-based poetry (Oulipo) and systems art, the work reveals how our cultural and linguistic systems are inextricably bound to ecological destruction.
Environmental Critique
By embedding climate data within poetic structure, the work transforms abstract emissions into embodied experience where reading becomes complicit in environmental destruction.
Interactive Experience
Visitors first encounter a seemingly traditional climate poem on a touchscreen interface. When they interact with the screen, they discover the hidden flight paths and massive carbon emissions embedded in each line, making visible the environmental cost of our interconnected world.
Experience the Work
Explore the full interactive installation and discover how constraint-based poetry becomes environmental critique.
Launch Interactive Work Exhibition InformationExhibition Format
Technical Requirements
- Large-scale touchscreen installation (32" minimum, vertical orientation preferred)
- Web-based platform optimized for gallery exhibition
- Self-contained application requiring minimal technical maintenance
- Optional: Physical magnetic airport code tiles for visitor participation
The digital work can be accompanied by physical magnetic airport code tiles, enabling visitors to engage directly with the constraint-based process and create their own poems within the system's formal limitations.
Artist
Pedro Poitevin is a bilingual poet and mathematician whose work explores the intersections of constraint, language, and formal systems. Author of six books of poetry, including Nowhere at Home (Penteract Press, 2023), his work bridges traditional forms and avant-garde experimentation. He is a professor of mathematics at Salem State University.