About EcoTetris
The Game
The EcoTetris game is the main focus of this website. Each block in the game represents 72,000 kWh of electricity usage on campus. Like any Tetris game, the point is to fit blocks together to complete and eliminate lines. As you eliminate lines, you also eliminate kilowatt-hours: your score is the number of trees that you've “planted” that could filter the CO2 produced by the electricity you eliminated from the atmosphere.
The campus electricity usage data was collected via the Cornell Facilities website. The approximations of the number of trees necessary to offset the produced greenhouse gases were calculated using data collected from Cornell Facilities and figures used by Tiffany Holmes in “Eco-visualization: Combining Art and Technology to Reduce Energy Consumption” (159).
The Project
EcoTetris is a final project for S Hum 415, Environmental Interventions, taught by Prof Phoebe Sengers at Cornell University in the fall of 2007. This site is designed to focus attention on electricity usage on the Cornell campus.
Our goal in this project is to visualize Cornell's energy usage data. We hope to educate people about not only the amount of energy Cornell uses in a given building, but to illustrate that usage though a more symbolic metaphor. In addition to this, we hope to educate people about what they can do to address this issue.
Who Are We?
We are a group of three undergraduate students from Cornell University.