Dioramat—1.Lithium by University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne

Commissioned by The French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — CEA Grenoble), Dioramat1—1.Lithium (in French version only) is the first in a series of very large-format mixed data materializations allotted to the subject of critical materials/critical minerals for energy. Through a “narrative flow” (data flow/data story) combining words, images and sounds, the key issue was to address the different levels2 of “dependence” encountered by industries in various sectors using Lithium as a raw/primary resource, as well as the different stages/states/degrees of criticality of the latter. Comprising four chapters — (1.) Matter and Transformation, (2.) Geography and Exploitation, (3.) Industry and Tension, (4.) Connection and Transition — the Dioramat—1.Lithium sequence deploys an original graphic environment (a kind of ambient perceptual “milieu”, in James Gibson’s sense) where representations and figurations, metaphors and allegories intermingle. With this datadesign project, we intended to approach in a sensitive way (between sensation and impression, perception and understanding), chapter after chapter, the complex and structural linkage between the different domains, factors and degrees of criticality of the said material. So, as the environment is defined, as the shapes are formed and refined, the viewer gains access to different levels (or layers) of representation of both the material’s properties and specificities, its uses and applications, and the economic, political and ecological determinants to which it is directly linked.

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1. In reference to the dioramas described by Willard Cope Brinton in Graphic presentation (1939), a digital update has never been fully thought through.

2. Referring to the various fields selected (and possibly to several of the related sectors): geology, economics, ecology, ethics, geopolitics, politics (etc.).