30 Under 30 Selection

I’ve just been named one of Bristol’s Young 30 Under 30, off the back of a project I made called Greenverse—a data visualisation film exploring how our choices today shape the climate of tomorrow.

The piece was part of a broader programme connecting young artists in Bristol and South Korea. Each of us responded to the same brief in our own way, and Greenverse was my solo contribution. It imagined two diverging futures—one dystopian and one optimistic—using real IPCC climate models and data. I used NASA’s Panoply software to visualise two different scenarios: one where emissions spiral (RCP 8.5), and one where we manage to limit warming (RCP 2.6). These visuals were brought into After Effects and mapped into a 3D space, where I could fly a camera through time and across temperature maps of the globe. Left and right audio channels were split into separate soundscapes—dystopian news flashes on one side, hopeful developments on the other.

The project had its fair share of hurdles. My computer couldn’t handle exporting more than 15 seconds at a time without crashing, and I had to lean on Martin O’Leary, the resident tech wizard at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio, for help deciphering some of the more complex data formats. It was one of those pieces that felt bigger than my skillset at the time—which is exactly why it was worth doing.

I never expected this would be the thing to get picked up, but I’m really glad it did. Being selected as one of Bristol’s 30 Under 30 is a lovely reminder that projects driven by curiosity and purpose—without client briefs or commercial expectations—can still carry weight. Sometimes it’s the unpaid, slightly terrifying side projects that quietly become the most meaningful things you’ve made.