Living Data

Living Data dance

COMMENTS

Lisa Roberts presents Living Data: Artists and scientists contribute to a grand narrative for a sustainable future. Dreams and Imagination: Healing pathways conference Sydney, 20 April 2012.

A floating screen of plankton meshis illuminated by animationsthat combine stories, data and iconography shared by scientists and other artists. Like a scientific model, the installation has evolved to reflect current knowledge. The story is that a healthy environment maintains homeostasis (balance) between its parts and that human actions are tipping the natural balance. Recent data are graphs that show sea levels rising and diagrams that show changing patterns of growth in some plants and animals. Iconography are circling, spiraling and crossing lines that dynamically connect parts to suggest the whole system. Unlike a scientific model, this model can be touched. You can move through it and feel part of it.

This excerpt shows variability in the tempo of the music (by Sophie Green) and in the dance of marine algae (Hormosira banksii), waves, dancing hands (of Catherine Magill) and the opening of alveoli (air sacs) in the lungs at the moment of a child's first breath.

Lisa Roberts

Animation/installation:
Lisa Roberts

Sound:
Derek Davies
Sophie Green

Data:

Krill
So Kawaguchi
Jaime Gomez-Gutierrez
Steve Nicol
Australian Antarctic Division
Uwe Kils

Diatoms
McMurdo Dry Valleys
Long-Term Ecological Research Antarctic sea ice
United States Geological Survey Sea levels rising
John Church et al.
CSIRO

Hormosira banksii
(Neptune's necklace)
Martina Doblin
Climate Change Cluster (C3)
University of Technology, Sydney

Alveoli
(Air sacs in lungs)
Nicholas Kiraly
Royal Hobart Hospital

Iconography:

Connecting spiral
Kim Holten
Unravelling spiral
Rena Czaplinska

Dance:

Helen Clarke-Lapin
Belinda Cussens
Rena Czaplinska
Mike Green
Mircalla Havier
Catherine Magill
Caterina Mocciola
Lisa Roberts

Production assistant:
Ken Wilson