Andrew Thomas

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Andrew Thomas has contributed audio to the project, adding a dimension of Navajo (Dineh) culture to Wai.

Biography

Andrew Thomas is a contemporary Dineh (Navajo Nation) flute player. He gives thanks to his extended family: Haltsooí Diné’e (maternal)—Meadow People Clan, Bit’ahníí (paternal)—Folded Arms Clan, Kin Yaa’áanii (maternal grandparents)—Towering House Clan, and Tsé Nahabilnii (paternal grandparents)—Over Hanging Rock Clan. He was born and raised in Rock Spring Chapter near Gallup, New Mexico. He is self-taught, and plays music composed from the heart. He has chosen the flute’s voice to express his way of life, heritage and culture.

The flute provided him the opportunity to create the music and narration for a video documentary about male Navajo weavers entitled Men Who Weave. He feels fortunate that his music has allowed him to travel widely, both nationally and internationally. He has performed all over the United States, including the Indian Summer Festival in Milwaukee, the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Ute Mountain Casino, and over 10 years at the American Indian Powwow Gathering in Hawaii. He has performed in Mexico, Peru, South Korea, and throughout Europe, including Sweden where he had a story published in the book, They Call Us “Indians”. He was also the first Native American artist to play at the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore. He was honored to perform for the president of Pakistan, as well.

His first venture into recording has resulted in a CD titled “Changing Woman’s Blessings”. More recently, he recorded in Perth, Australia, with a well-known Aboriginal actor and musician, Heath Bergersen. This cross-cultural collaboration has culminated in a CD mixing the sounds of the traditional Australian instrument, the didgeridoo, and the Native American flute titled “Friends for Life”.

Through his music and his life, he is an activist in preserving Native ways, creating awareness of the need for communication across cultures, and protecting all human rights. In this way, he strives to give back to the community. He most enjoys connecting with people of all cultures and sharing the musical language of the flute.

“Flutes are not political. They transcend heritage differences.”

pou hihiri

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Pou Hihiri

Pou Hihiri – The Womb of the Universe

Project team

Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, Poutua, Kaumatua (Elder), Author
Te Urutahi Waikerepuru, Concept Designer & Artist
Julian Priest, Custom Electronics
Tom Greenbaum, Custom Electronics
Craig McDonald, Graphics Artist
Sophie Jerram & Dugal McKinnon – Sound Effects

Artist statement

The Pou Hihiri is a representation of the womb of the universe. Within its core is the blue print, the DNA, the life‐giving blood of the universe, the unrealized potential of all that is and all that is to come. Pou Hihiri is a visualisation of the receptacle, the womb that holds the great nothing, the long nothing, the deep nothing all of which is yet to be realized. It is pre‐emergent potentiality, at times, heaving, breathing, laboring in its efforts to release it’s burden. Pou Hihiri has the deceptive appearance of stillness, timelessness and spatial immortality.

The pou is part of the exhibition Wai at 516 Arts during ISEA 2012 Albuquerque Machine Wilderness.

 

Residency Project: Jo Tito – Earth Water Stones Light

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Initially Jo’s project was just going to focus on WAI – WATER and where the science of water and te reo Māori meet.

Now, the project will also include: 

Earth Water Stones Light

EARTH – geology, harakeke, stones, geography

LIGHT – photography, photosynthesis, natural light

STONES – as storytellers, creative, healing, spiritual, connection

Jo will venture into different spaces and places within the Taranaki landscape to sing new waiata (songs),  to create art in the moment in harmony with nature, impermanent art works that over time will disappear into nature itself. She will document these creations through photography and moving image and will sing these new songs inspired by nature…

While in those spaces, she will also explore Māori concepts within nature, looking at the science of how water flows, the effect that light has on spaces within the landscape and on the living earth.

The process will be very organic, created alone and with others. Te Reo Māori will also weave intricately through these landscapes and will at some point meet with science. Again an organic process to find where that place and space is.

For more info on the project and Jo visit:

http://sciencewithsoul.com

Wai dawn opening

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Wai will open at dawn, 6.53am September 19th 2012 at 516 Arts, 516 Central Ave SW Albuquerque,  led by Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, as part of ISEA 2012 Albuquerque Machine Wilderness. All welcome.

 

There will also be a special session of ISEA, at OFFCENTER in Albuquerque from 12 to 1.45pm on Sunday23rd September. All welcome to that event too.

 

Later that same day, the 23rd, from 4pm till 9pm, the third Intercreate.org project for ISEA 2012 Machine Wilderness Bus garden will be presented as part of the Block Party on Central Ave.

 

 

 

Car garden + Neighbourhood air

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Bus Garden
ISEA 2012 Albuquerque Machine Wilderness

Once I was in a bus in Japan and I had a vision of being in a forest at the same time as being in the bus. These two are often seen as antagonistic, but we must find ways to unite them.

The Car garden merges two apparently divergent entities to suggest a future cohabitation. On the one hand we continue to use fossil fuels in transportation and on the other hand we must change our relationship to the earth to one that is more sustainable.  This a ‘complex duality’ because it is not a simple dichotomy between transportation or reforesting. Plants filter the air we breath, and inside the Car garden you can explore the Neighbourhood air project while breathing cleaner air.

Neighbourhood air is an epiphyte growing in the Car garden. The work is an ambient software that responds to environmental sensors. Cars, breathers of city air and temperature and humidity circulate in a slowly moving monitoring system. This interactive, online artwork gathers live pollutant levels from Auckland city air. Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city and despite the ‘100% PURE New Zealand’ tourism campaign even geographically remote cities have air quality problems that the winds can’t disperse. Pollutants from vehicle combustion in Auckland, New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere circulate in the same atmospheric container as cities like Albuquerque.

To plant and regenerate the earth’s remaining oxygen producing forests can heal the atmospheric imbalance created by vehicular emissions, alongside crucial changes in human car usage. Somehow we have to leap over where we are, to be where we want to be.

 

One Man is an Island – Rachael Rakena

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One Man is an Island, 2009, Rachael Rakena (Iwi – Ngai Tahu, Nga Puhi), High definition video, courtesy of Bartley and Company Art, Wellington

Residency Proposal: Korou Dance

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Ūkaipō

KOROU PRODUCTIONS LTD © UKAIPO_HYSLOP

Korou Productions is currently in the first phase of research and consultation for Ūkaipo – A new dance opera in Te Reo Māori.  SCANZ 2013 will be an welcome opportunity for the Ūkaipo kaupapa to connect with mana whenua and tangata whenua of the Taranaki rohe and attending interdisciplinary artists and scientists.

Ūkaipō Celebrates the divine feminine, the mother nurturer; mother nature.

In exaltation of the natural realms of Papatūānuku and Ranginui where earth meets sea and sky, we honour the sacredness of water, our relationship to the South Pacific, distant homelands of Hawaiki and new horizons. Cloaked in a korowai of sacred forest we re-connect to ancient consciousness in a new form.

Toitū te whenua, whatungarongaro te tangata.  Papatūānuku calls for tremendous healing.  Mankind continues to use the provisions of Papatūānuku in excessive amounts. People live and die, disappear, but land remains, what state are we, the current generations leaving our lands for future generations?

Ūkaipō Births a new art form, merging the traditional vocal genre of classical and Avant-Garde Opera, in Te Reo Māori with contemporary Māori dance theatre.  Envisaging the earthy creation of Rangi Mareikura: Heaven of the adorned sweet voiced singers.  Ūkaipō moves toward creating a celestial experience to affirm our physical, spiritual and intellectual interconnectivity with our intact but remnant environment.

Ūkaipō Will work within Māori and Tauira communities that promote environmental care and wish to expand their stories and their messages of resilience, conservation and sustainability.

Ūkaipō Will engage with allied art forms and artists that desire to share in the holistic and conscious approach to this new work including fine artists, body painters and special effects, sculptors, creators of taonga, adornment makers, glass workers and multi-media and computer graphics design.

Ūkaipō Is to be the first of its kind specifically designed to actively encourage a dedicated team of professional artists to engage in a Dance Opera in te reo Māori, and through wānanga outreach to communities in Aotearoa – both Rural and Urban.

Ūkaipō Is currently in Phase One Research supported by Creative NZ Te Waka Toi Arts Grant 2011.

Residency Project: Agnese Trocchi and Giovanna Dante

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Back to the antipodes

Our project is on the razor edge between poetry, science and science-fiction. We will enquire into the anxieties and expectations of humanity in these days of uncertainty.

We will explore the collective subconscious and it’s relationship with the earth, the geodesic energies and the human settlements.

Our attempt is to use scientific and creative tools to represent the collective dreamspaces across two continents, one at the antipodes of the other.

“Back to the Antipodes“ is a reminder that if we want to give a chance to human beings to live in this planet we should go back to our roots which are deeply connected to the heart of the planet and to the heart of our subconscious.

“Back to the Antipodes” means that we are all interwoven and our attempt is to search for connections between New Zealand and Europe, both on a physical and on a psychical level.

Do the connections exist? How they may be represented?

With our project we are going to collect dreams from the collective subconscious fields in Italy and in New Zealand.

We will choose two different areas and we will focus on the ancient and contemporary human settlements. We want to enquire the etrurian areas (the former inhabitants of Italy 3000 years ago) in relationship with the original indigenous settlements in New Zealand.

To collect dreams from the contemporary humans we use different means: interviews, private audio-box, websites, social networks, private recordings.

We will develop an online platform and a questionary to engage with who will be willing to share their dreams with us.

In the second step we analyze the collected dreams to find recurrency of words, actions and elements.

With the data estrapolated from the analysis of dreams we create one or more tableau vivant to be filmed: the tableau vivant are moving postcards from the dreamscapes.

At the same time we are going to draw territorial maps in GIS environment of the two locations that we choosed for collecting dreams.

In the maps we are going to underline the dream-sources areas (the places from which the dreams arise) with a particolar attention to the distribution of different topics in dreams.

The outcome of the work will be a multimedia installation (video-audio-text) which will show the process of data collecting, the maps and the postcards from the dreamscape.

Residency Project: Cecelia Cmielewski

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What is wind?
The art based research brings my thirty year history of cross cultural communications together in this project in concert with the cross fertilization facilitated through the WITT Art Space.

I will research exchanges of different knowledge systems – comparing and contrasting Maori and Indigenous environmental concepts with each other and western scientific ‘descriptors’. This first exploration will be kept very simple and look at an everyday experience by asking people “What is wind?”

The work would consist of interviews and data gathering (many of which I would complete in Australia before arriving in NZ) and ideally range between older experts and the younger generation. I intend to include some interviews taken during my visit to Northern India in October.

The outcome would combine photographic documentation (a portrait) with some text from the interviews and perhaps an illustration by the interviewee.

The topic that I am researching and producing is one that has yet to be well realised in a multi and cross cultural approach in Australia. The rich intersections between different cultures and their knowledge systems will expand the creative opportunities for those who participate and those who engage with the work. This project is the first phase to refine the methods and ways of presenting differing cultural perspectives on a seemingly simple question “what is wind?”

I will seek and obtain formal permissions from the participants prior to the research beginning which will add to the body of knowledge of ethical approaches in the arts.

The public are welcome to attend and much of the cross fertilisation will occur, in terms of projects and discussion. I will present an overview of my experience at a Friday seminar at SymbioticA, which is open to all Perth residents, and will contribute to the blog that is part of the SCANZ program. I will also present at the SCANZ symposium which will be published by Leonardo Journal.

The high level of international networking and collaboration, through working spaces and discussions, will produce opportunities that go beyond the time of the residency.

Residency Project: Josh Wodak

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Image: >2 degrees before 2028, detail, photograph 45×65

My proposal for the residency is three-fold:

  1. – to participate in the Open Lab, in sharing perspectives and approaches to exploring environmental issues through interdisciplinary art+research
  2. – to participate in the low cost electronics workshop to build a rapid prototype of the LED light strip (described below)
  3. – to liaise with local community members and fellow participants to develop the following project, and to seek out potential participants for the project in New Zealand through SCANZ 2013.

‘Ocean Island’ is a series of staged video-portraits of 6 individuals from Tuvalu and Kiribati, now living in New Zealand in light of climate change effects on their islands of origin. Production would take place after SCANZ 2013, over two months, at locations determined by the participants.

The video-portraits symbolically depict futuristic sea level rise on today’s Pacific Islanders.

Each portrait is of a participant standing on shallow New Zealand sandbars with their body facing the camera, to appear to be figuratively ‘standing on water’, as they are filmed from the nearby shoreline with open ocean behind them. One arm is held outstretched, to symbolise the fable of King Canute holding back the rising tide. This stance and composition is illustrated in the photograph below.

A 3cm wide, 100cm long strip of 50 red LED lights is attached along their right arm, going from their fingertips to the their head. They stare at their fingertips for 2 minutes while the LEDs are lit up, from their fingertip and then increasing one-by-one to their head. This rising column of lights symbolises the sea level rising up their body, as per the sea level rise forecasted for the end of this century.

Staring at the fingertip while this symbolic flood height rises symbolises the cumulative passage of time and how each subject is metaphorically passing through the remaining 88 years of this century (represented by each successive LED light, like a growth ring on a tree or ‘lines of age’).

Speed and playback of each real-time 2 minute recording is manipulated to evoke the different ways sea level rise will occur if global temperatures increase more or less than 2 degrees by 2100. Each recording’s length will correspond to an equivalent temperature rise: e.g. Portrait A @1”45 seconds represents 1.75 degree increase, Portrait B @2”30 seconds represents 2.5 degree increase. Each video-portrait has a corresponding 2 channel sound collage of wind, rain, surf, thunder, hail and other weather phenomena (drawing on my practice in sound arts and classical training in music composition).

The video-portraits would be projected in vertical diptychs, with the left video projection showing a subject holding their right arm out and the right projection showing a subject holding their left arm out (like in photograph below). The exhibition would feature all 6 segments from 2 DVD players on a looping cycle, forming asynchronous relationships between neighbouring portraits, as their playback would shift in and out of phase with one another due to the slightly different length of each portrait.