In June 2009, Artist as Citizen opened a contest not unlike this one.

The contest, an idea first proposed by The New York Times' environment blog Dot Earth, asked participants to come up with fresh, captivating, accurate and effective  ways to describe climate trends, causes and consequences.

Artist as Citizen is a non profit organisation with a mission to encourage art students to pursue “pragmatic social engagement, ask ing them to confront issues that will directly impact American society and their own lives.” So they naturally targeted undergraduate and graduate art students with recent degrees.

Today, Dot Earth published a link to the winning entry. 

Two Pratt Architecture students, Sean Reagin and Tom Holliday (shown below) won for their piece called “Tracing Emissions". 

Artist as Citizen awarded the two students a small grant to develop their idea, which employed good old-fashioned paper and other nonvirtual materials to build three-dimensional flow charts illustrating the links between human activities, emissions and possible global climatic outcomes.

"Sean and I were interested in seeing if we could reinterpret the data as a system," Holliday told Dot Earth.

"We tried to draw in the viewer with images that were identifiable played against a dense web of connections. It was definitely more challenging than it initially looked. There are so many different ways to approach the problem of representation and each has its drawbacks and advantages."

Tracing Emissions is a complex project composed of fairly traditional materials. To see the other finalists, including video, flash animation and photography click here