Living Data
Imaging Nature II
Wilderness alive: Reconnecting through a collaborative research practice, is a talk with animation and live music by Rupert Summersonpresented at the Imaging NatureII Conference 20-22 June 2012, at Tarraleah Lodge on Tasmania's Central Plateau.
The Oceanic Living Data animation was screened at the conference and concurrently presented concurrently to Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) delegates at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)in Hobart. For ATCM delegates the animation was screened through plankton mesh that once trawled for plankton in the Southern Ocean. As the image above shows, the mesh screen features in the animation. This presentation featured recorded music by Derek Davies, Sophie Green and Fabio Muccini.
ABSTRACT
Wilderness alive: Reconnecting through a collaborative research practice
When wilderness is dead in the public imagination, are we dead in spirit? I believe so. By spirit I mean liveliness, or simply Life and I define an art work as complete when it expresses a life of its own, or spirit. The view that art, science and spirituality are parts of one knowledge system is holistic. A primal level of connection is essential for making sense of scientific models. Scientists describe the biosphere as Life and this view is reflected in the iconography of artists who have worked with them. Scientists recognise humans as part of the natural world but their voices are necessarily measured. Wilderness may be enlivened in the public imagination when scientific models that predict threats to its existence are understood in ways that combine logic with spirit. Primal gestural forms that are circling, spiralling and crossing have been used since ancient times as expressions of connection. They visualise change and transformation, the very qualities that define life. Today new meanings are assigned to the ancient forms in data and iconography that symbolise natural systems and body knowledge of connection to them. Art that results from collaborations between artists and scientists gives new meanings to existing theories. When icons of connection are shared, visualisations can be made that contribute to animating the public imagination to stir global action to sustain, not diminish, wilderness.
