An installation employing historic and contemporary climate data to develop animations of the Southern Ocean.The documentation shows the Southern Ocean circulating the Antarctic landmass (central). The project software runs in real-time generating the ocean currents on the fly, to which are mapped various other ecological data sets. These geophysical couplings mesh in real time, to produce flickering constellations of tidal flow, wind direction and biotic form. The shimmering images of environmental change, produced derive from the global mechanics of climate monitoring. Drawing upon a multiplicity of data resources, models, physical theories and sensing technologies it asks how these global infrastructures enable an opening up of the hidden systems and processes at large in the wider material world. The work also addresses memory: of site; place and environment. By layering up and integrating multiple historic and contemporary data sets within the same moving image we formulate what we describe as ‘deep time landscapes’, extended temporal forms that are visual gestalts of long-term environmental changes. Tom Corby/Gavin Baily.
The project was produced in collaboration with Jonathan Mackenzie. The British Antarctic Survey provided scientific advice, and supplied data and climate models. Funded by Arts Council England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Media/date of production 2010-12
Software, data, screen. Duration and scale indeterminate.
Additional watercolours, A2 size on 450 gsm watercolour paper using soviet era CO2, salinity and atmospheric data.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Nathan Cunningham, Dr Clare Tancell, and Professor David Walton from the British Antarctic Survey who advised us the underlying science of climate change, and Arts Council England, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Westminster who provided the funding to research, develop and produce the work.
Referenced in:
A. Brown, Art and Ecology Now, London: Thames and Hudson, 2014, pp. 130-131
S. Worden, ‘The Earth Sciences and Creative Practice’ in H. Dew (ed.) Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Creative Technologies, IGI Global, 2015, pp. 125-126
