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.

 

Project proposal – Nigel Helyer

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Nigel Helyer has been invited to develop an audio project utilising data sensors and Open Meshwork in Pukekura Park with a custom online data to audio translation. The system is permanently installed in New Plymouth’s botanic garden.

Currently, temperature, UV and people count data is collected. Other projects involve sensors monitoring tree voltage, the electromagnetic field, moisture and penguin data. Working out how to creatively utilise data is problematic and fruitful.

The system in Pukekura Park is the basis for a number of projects including Wai in Albuquerque for ISEA 2012. The Park Speaks established the system and was a collaboration involving Adrian Soundy, Andrew Hornblow, Julian Priest and Ian Clothier.

WAI by Te Hunga Wai Tapu

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The Pacific Ocean from space
Image credit: Detlev van Ravensway Science Photo Library

 

Te Hunga Wai Tapu roughly translates as the group of people for whom water is sacred. They are: Ian Clothier, Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, Te Urutahi Waikerepuru, Jo Tito, Craig Macdonald, Julian Priest, Tom Greenbaum, Sharmila Samant, Leon Cmielewski, Josephine Starrs, Andrew Hornblow, Darren Robert Terama Ward, Johnson Dennison, Andrew Thomas, Gordon Bronitsky. Aerial imagery courtesy of Land Information New Zealand.

This group consists of people from Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States of America, Australia and India. A global community representing many cultures, including the indigenous.

The works presented consist of aspects of traditional Māori knowledge; five videos shown through two data projectors; a Pou Hihiri (which reflects the womb of the universe that holds unrealized potential ); and traditional Māori and Navajo/Dine audio generated live by data sensors in New Zealand.

 

Contributors and roles

Ian Clothier is the curator for the project and is project manager.

Wai rests on Mātauranga Māori provided by Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru. Mātauranga Māori refers to traditional knowledge, pre-colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, which means before 1840. At the SCANZ 2011:Eco sapiens hui-symposium, Dr Waikerepuru spoke about Wai as central to Maori world view. Wai connects air, atmosphere, mountains, rivers, beaches and humans via breath.

Te Urutahi Waikerepuru has contributed strategy, networking and core creative activity – the Pou Hihiri was created under her direction. Craig Macdonald made the Pou Hihiri graphics which involved  interpretation of traditional stars and concepts into contemporary form and materials. Julian Priest and Tom Greenbaum created the custom electronics LED control system.

Jo Tito is a Maori artist who exhibits internationally. Her contribution is a video concerning Maori notions of Wai.

Sink was created by Julian Priest and is a model of anthropogenic ocean acidification which is based on a scientific view of the interaction of humans and natural systems: a shell acidifies on exposure to greenhouse gases. Priest is well know for his work in open source, open networks and creative projects.

Sharmila Samant is a well known contemporary artist from India. She recently traveled to Taranaki in New Zealand to make a work for the exhibition Sub Tropical Heat: New Art from South Asia. Given her interest in water issues in India, she created a video work in which Te Huirangi spoke about water while standing on the banks of the Waiwakaiho river.

Sydney based Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs are collaborators on an animated video and highly regarded for the work with text and landscape. Their video for features the words of Te Huirangi digitally etched into Taranaki maunga (Mount Taranaki_. Cmielewski and Starrs are fr0m Australia and met Te Huirangi Waikerepuru at the SCANZ 2011 Eco sapiens hui-symposium.

In Aotearoa New Zealand in the small Taranaki town of Opunake are situated three data sensors. The sensors are custom made by Andrew Hornblow. Data from the sensors runs to the project website, where each data reading is correlated to an audio file of either traditional Maori sounds or traditional Navajo sounds. This system was made by Julian Priest and Adrian Soundy for The Park Speaks. Julian Priest also provides server support.

Darren Robert Terama Ward is a contemporary Maori artist who also makes his own traditional musical instruments. He is contributing the traditional Maori audio. Andrew Thomas is a Navajo/Dine musician and is contributing the Navajo sounds, played on traditional instruments.

Johnson Dennison is Navajo/Dine Medicine Man and will contribute to the dawn opening ceremony led by Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru. Te Huirangi Waikerepuru considers it important to contact, respect and collaborate with local indigenous people.

Gordon Bronitsky is a cultural producer and has assisted us by providing connection points to local indigenous peoples and advice of a cultural nature.

wai exhibition

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Wai visualisation

Visualisation of the Wai installation

About Wai

Humanity and Earth are at an important juncture: the intersection of past unsustainable approaches to environment and the potential for a sustainable future. An important factor in these issues is listening to the voice of indigenous people on the subject of environment. It is quite clear that the West will not by its own means resolve climate change issues.

Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru, a highly respected Māori Kaumatua (elder) from Aotearoa New Zealand has provided the core concept and ideological underpinning for Wai (which means water or flow). The project is selected for exhibition at 516Arts during ISEA 2012 Albuquerque Machine Wilderness.

Wai is an integrating focus – embracing rain and snow in the mountains, rolling downward via rivers to the beach and into the human body via breath. Māori worldview involves seeing an integrated whole with humans in direct relationship with nature.

Notions of integrated systems will be familiar to many, and the connection to electronic art is found in the words of Associate Professor of Zoology Mike Paulin “Scientists, artists and others are transforming the environment into an organism, as Māori and indigenous peoples have always known it to be.” Wai consists of data sensors in Aotearoa New Zealand, integrated with works by Maori, New Zealand, Australian, Indian and Navajo/Dine artists in an electronic art installation.

SCANZ2013:Digital Anthropophagy

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Digital Anthropophagy

Author: Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez

Abstract

The background of my Digital Anthropophagy theory comes from the “fair use” conundrum of the Information Age. One of my own art practices is to create films from found footage and openly exposed media online. I metabolize these materials into new contexts. In the creative process of this practice, in the age of the Internetworked Information Society as the producer of culture also engaged in remixing, offering a rich self-serving online buffet, I often thought of the Anthropophagic practices of some Brazilian indigenous tribes when they came into contact with their colonizers. The indigenous cannibal honorably eats the foreign in order to incorporate his strength, experiences and qualities and to see through the cannibalized foreigner’s eyes. But I find that in today’s digital culture, we unceremoniously consume the world around us in a globalized structure, thus quickly acquiring worldly references and spitting them out in a personal but also somewhat homogenized way. We have thus become both the cannibal and the cannibalized because of the wide and immediate access to information and the incredible reduction of time it now takes to consume that widely available culture. It no longer takes a passive person watching the ships arriving on the shore in order to consume what they might bring aboard, and conversely, for the colonizer in those ships to take away the riches they “discover” in far-away lands. Over five hundred years later, that exchange has now become cross-pollinated and more equal, and happening in an inhuman speed cycle. And the paradigm of power acquisition has now shifted from land ownership of colonies to ownership of information and creative property, especially engendered by the virtual world. This virtual world has started to disintegrate former imperialisms and push toward a “democratization of access” and “freedom of use” of information. And so I offer an analysis of Information Metabolism which drives human experiences. I hope that this theoretical essay furthers the discussion on “fair use” of media, leading to a simplification of global “fair use” cultural models and practice in the age of digital culture.

Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez

SCANZ2013:He Poi, pattern, collaboration and electronic art installation

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He Poi, pattern, collaboration and electronic art installation

Author: Deborah Lawler-Dormer

Abstract

“The melody is very simple (it has only three notes, all of which are within the range of a single tone) so that most of the musical interest is in the rhythm. Each repetition of the melody has two phrases, each with eight quaver beats. Unlike Western music which would organise this in a regular 4 + 4 throughout, ‘Tangi a taku ihu’ often substitutes an additive grouping (usually 3 + 2 + 3) for the 4 + 4. And the rhythm is still further complicated by syncopations between phrases. These syncopations may also be considered to be additive groupings over a period of 16 quaver beats instead of 8. In other words, the rhythm of the words gets out of step with the rhythm of the poi balls and two bars are needed before they coincide again. Thus the song is really an example of cross rhythm.”

Taking the words of Mervyn McLean describing the He Poi chant (1963) as an inspirational starting point, this paper will explore a collaborative research project that explores pattern generation and pattern recognition within the specific framework of the perception and experience of spatiotemporal phenomena within new media installation art. The methodology and practice of collaboration will therefore be at the heart of the project. The melodic and rhythmic composition of He Poi can also be seen as an analogy for dialogue – a practice of cross rhythm at times in synch and at others out of synch.

Advisors, who will also have the potential to be full collaborators, will be drawn from the neuroscience sector, local iwi from Parihaka, technical communities relating to sound and media installation and conceptual aesthetic theory. This project will be exploring aspects of an investigation that will be occurring in my creative practice PhD currently underway at the University of Auckland. Through this project I am seeking to create a dialogue between scientific and philosophical/spiritual concepts relating to time, memory and space; to explore experiential synthesis within media art installation and other real-time environments; and to create a critical practice informed by recent neuroaesthetic studies. This project is primarily relevant to the strand of 3rd Nature – namely engaging the sciences and hybrid arts.

SCANZ2013:the biotechnologies of the 3rd Nature

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Make, Do, Mend and Hack (MDMH) the biotechnologies of the 3rd Nature

Author: Brian Degger

Abstract

A Paper on The Biotechnologies you already Live with, and the Ones you Should. We propose that next ecology sees it’s citizens embracing biotechnology from the point of view of having ‘the good life’.

There is already a group of pragmatic individuals(call them biohackers, or DIYBio geeks) that are imagining this future, where science and model organisms aren’t confined to the laboratory, but are free to live and enrich our lives. We play, grow and eat science. We use organisms on a small scale to support, to inform, to gain information from our environment. We use the old biotechnologies of fermentation and pickling, but are not afraid to consider mixing it with genetic testing and engineering.

The next ecology we deserve is the hybridization of heavy lifting industries (metal work/genetically manipulated organism production, cancer treatments, trauma medicine) with light self-replicating technologies(yogurt making, general fermentation activities, genetic testing). Reintroducing the affordable domestic biotechnologies to the public releases them from buying what is essentially free. Through this process we can decommodify food and medicine and learn skills that can feed us and keep us healthy.

This paper explores examples of where this is being used already, and where it could go in the future.

SCANZ2013:Un Litro de Agua

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Un Litro de Agua

Authors: Ana Terry, Don Hunter

Abstract

Number 8 Collective (Ana Terry and Don Hunter) will present part of their collaborative community arts-based project, Un Litro de Agua, undertaken during their arts residency in Medellin, Colombia in 2012. The Un Litro de Agua premise was to initiate discussion and critical thinking around sustainable water practices through urban interventions and myth rejuvenation / reinterpretation through various artistic formats – focussing on river rejuvenation. The workshops and associated activities – both digital and non-digital – involved working with NGO’s Mi Sangri, Casa Tres Patios, and several youth groups of Comuna Tresé (Community Thirteen). During this process it became apparent that while the project’s sustainable thematic was the initial focal point, the very foundation to sustainable practices (whatever the ultimate focus) can only occur through collective agreement to work together negotiating cultural boarders – at micro and macro levels. In this instance boarders between discrete facilitators involved, ourselves as gringos/foreigners, and between families within a community. The later became of particular significance as the young workshop participants are victims of the last 20 years of drug gang violence that has resulted in displacement and a constantly shifting hierarchy between gangs and their associated families within the community. The Un Litro de Agua community project was, after considerable negotiation, embraced by the community leaders; as beyond introducing concepts of environmental care, it introduced and supported new ways sharing and retelling diverse cultural narratives, involving teamwork, valuing individual points of view, sharing of resources, and learning to use tools creatively rather than as weapons.

SCANZ2013:the very loud chamber orchestra of endangered species

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The very loud chamber orchestra of endangered species

Author: Pinar Yoldas

Abstract

Modern technology and culture has disconnected us from the rest of the world’s biota. Having built entirely man-made environments, we have distanced ourselves from the rest of the organisms on the planet. Having created the technology to control nature, we have alienated ourselves from the interspecies culture of mother earth . Feeling elevated, we have lost respect for other life forms, which have no less value than our own.

The VERY LOUD CHAMBER ORCHESTRA of ENDANGERED SPECIES is a collaborative art-science project, which explores the impact of environmental degradation on non-human animals. More specifically, it is a spatial data visualization and sonification project that aims to communicate environmental data on pollution, species and habitat loss to the general public in an engaging, non-technical manner. The spatial installation consists of skulls from various species. Each ‘cranial unit’ will be equipped with a servo motor and speakers and generate sound and movement in response to changes in the relevant data sets. By literally giving a VOICE to those whose habitats and lives are jeopardized by human activities, the project will initiate a subliminal emotional dialogue between viewers and the life forms that they often overlook. In essence, this project is an audible attempt to restore the dignity of other organisms that inhabit this planet and is an aesthetic amplifier of the negative consequences of our cultural choices. Alternatively, this project can be understood as a memento mori for those whose existence has been threatened, and a roaring wake-up call to the human race.