10 AM-5 PM
Area Map 
Parking Fixed Air, screenshot. Image courtesy of the artist.
Fixed Air: solar-powered system, mylar, Li-Cor gas analyzer on ICA's roof, Winter 2017. Image courtesy of the artist.
Jon Phillip-Sheridan
FIXED AIR
Fixed Air uses the three-dimensional language of video games and special effects to visualize human impact on our changing climate. Equipment on the ICA’s roof tracks the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by vehicles at Richmond’s busiest intersection: Broad and Belvidere.
Software transforms this data into simulated masses. The monitors visualize current and accumulated CO2 levels generated from data collected during the run of this exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to visit fixedair.org for in-depth charts of data collected on this site.
Assistants: Meredith Brindley (graphics and programming) and Kevin Watson (gas analyzer engineering)
VCU Science Consultants: Christopher Gough, Ph.D (Biology) and Stephen Fong, Ph.D. (Engineering)
ON VIEW
Fixed Air, 2018. Two-channel media installation, solar-powered system, mylar, Li-Cor gas analyzer, diaphragm pump, vinyl tubing, Raspberry Pi, and URL Courtesy of the artist
LOCATION
Lower Level (-1)
“Climate change is the ultimate paradox, inextricably linked to both the positive and negative of the larger culture and local community. Everything we do contributes to it; every piece of food, every piece of clothing, every car trip pumps more greenhouse gas into the system. This shows how deeply connected we all are, and that across socio-economic strata, our fates are intertwined.” —Jon-Phillip Sheridan
WHAT MOTIVATES YOU AS AN ARTIST?
To reveal the complexity behind the smooth surface of our culture of consumption, but to make this complexity “feelable”; to make knowledge that is usually trapped in large abstractions of specialization available to metaphor, to intuitive understanding.
DO YOU BELIEVE ART HAS SOCIALLY TRANSFORMATIVE POWER?
Yes, even if you took the simplest, most conservative approach to interpreting art’s function, that it acts as some autonomous mirror of society, that it reflects its values, its hierarchies–even within this conservative framework you can understand it as a sight of social conflict. And I think this reveals that, like every other part of culture, that transformation doesn’t just arise from one sphere. But even if art is only a mirror, it’s a type of knowledge production about the conditions of culture and this knowledge can be an inspiration and energy for activists. Of course we know that it can be so much more than that.
Born 1977, Charlottesville, Virginia; Lives in Richmond, Virginia
Jon-Phillip Sheridan is an artist working primarily with photography and film. Sheridan deconstructs photographs and found images, creating meticulous, kaleidoscopic arrangements that question materiality and the paradox of the picture plane itself.
Sheridan received his BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Select solo exhibitions: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA (2011); Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA (2012); and Heiner Contemporary in Washington, DC (2011). Select group exhibitions: University of Richmond Museums (2015); and the RISD Museum in Rhode Island (2012-2013). Collections include: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Markel Corporation, Capital One and the Federal Reserve Bank. Select awards: VMFA fellowship (2010), Oxford American “Top 100 Emerging Southern Artists” (2012). Sheridan currently is the Administrative Director and Assistant Professor at VCU School of Arts Department of Photography and Film.