Flight Patterns is a data visualisation project that precisely traces the path of airline flights in the United States in colour and form, animating the path of the thousands of aircraft in American airspace during a single day. The result is a living image that creates a pulsing, shifting representation of the outline of the USA. It shows the rhythm of the country as it wakes up, goes to sleep and moves around, as well as the tide of transatlantic traffic coming in from the East every morning, and going out again each evening. Aaron Koblin - "I was interested in seeing the way 'Flight Patterns' kind of slices up the country ... You can see the ebb and flow as plane routes erupt on the East Coast in the morning, flow over to the West Coast and eventually to Hawaii."

Aaron Koblin is an artist, designer and researcher focused on creating and visualising human systems. Currently working out of San Francisco, California, Aaron creates software and architectures to transform social and infrastructural data into artworks. Koblin's work has been shown internationally and is part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. www.aaronkoblin.com

FutureEverything's Curatorial Approach: Trade City

FutureEverything is showing two artworks at TradeCity from our recent Environment 2.0 exhibition. The artworks selected here both illuminate the theme of trade in unique ways. Aaron Koblin presents a stunning data visualisation of thousands of aircraft traversing America. Here a living image of the USA is created solely by this eternal motion along aviation trade routes, displaying the sinews of this most wantonly capitalistic country. Prayas Abhinav, in contrast, works from the ground up. His practice as an artist involves seeding grass-roots, social networks and infrastructures. It involves planting food as an intervention in the city, and looks at urban food systems, and the inter-personal networks that are needed to sustain them.

Originally presented at the Futuresonic 2009 Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas in Manchester during May 2009. Environment 2.0 was the culmination of three years of activities by FutureEverything in Manchester, Singapore, Lancaster and Berlin, which commenced in 2006. It included artworks that make visible and tangible outcomes of our actions at a local level, artworks conceived as social interventions, and artworks, which arise out of a sustained engagement and dialogue between artists and scientists. Here artists avoid cliches and address environmental sustainability in ways both forceful and irreverent. These artworks are curated by Drew Hemment and Dennis Hopkins.