The Blue Humanities Archive is an interdisciplinary project designed at the intersection of digital art, environmental humanities, and emerging technologies to enhance and support the protection of the depleting biodiversity of salt and freshwater.

It is focused on developing an ecological database dedicated to aquatic environments. Ultimately, the archive will be based on DNA digital data storage technology and will take a liquid form of a drop. We understand water as non-binary, transitional, and fluid substance that supports the idea of queer ecologies, environmental identity and justice, and the Fifth Wave of Feminism. Therefore, our goal is to create a sustainable and multi-sensorial model of documenting endangered species, preserving the memory of extinct aquatic environments, and open a collective space for hydrofeminist network and multispecies future through digital art.

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(B)OTHERING is the disturbance of the familiar through the encounter with beings in their otherness. It is through this contrast that the familiar becomes apparent and thus can itself become other again. Disturbances by their nature initiate potential for action and enable unimagined transformation. Engaging with otherness and mediating the substrate of coexistences opens up space for collaborative form-finding. Through observation and recording in disciplines ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities, the co-becoming of distinct entities is mapped and processed in glossary form. »Self-prints«, photograms, images on light-sensitive substances and living artifacts convey these sensitive findings, chronicling interplay, inter- and intra-action. The resulting artifacts, created through the actors‘ sympoiesis, illustrate new ways of troubling paradigms, of critically positioning oneself, and testing design in its intermediary role between science and society, to grasp it as a reflection on the familiar in the unknown – (B)OTHERING.

My practice is inspired by a deep desire to work collaboratively with more-than-human organisms. Through my photographic and photogrammatic techniques, I seek to co-create with various algal species, using their vital light to produce stunning images that speak to the beauty of nature. As a motif, the basis for algae-based developer and recycler at the same time statements of self emerge. 
Furthermore, these images facilitate discourse on the ecological impact of photo lab processes. Issues like water contamination from traditional chemicals, animal gelatine in emulsions, and plastic waste provide opportunities to explore alternatives. This work aims to foster more eco-friendly coexistence and establish new relationships with organic and photographic materials.
The project started in fall 2021.

https://www.antheaoestreicher.de/b-othering-exhibition

The life-giving, political, and economic components of our „animated waters“ (Vernadsky 1933, Margulis 1990) exemplify a pressing melancholy of our position as a human species. Spatially and temporally: as holobionts, as fluid beings, in our own bodies, in urban habitats, in the ecosystem, and in the Anthropocene.

This work draws from a stay at the river Schwärze and the bodily encounters occurring during this stay, which reflect the fluidity of water. Along the lifeline and contact zone between the forests of Brandenburg and the city of Berlin, the film immerses in wet ontologies (Gaard 2001, Steinberg & Peters 2015, Neimanis 2016) of multiple phenomena.


Capturing the essence and pains through analog photoprocesses, hydrotests, creative writing, and filmmaking.

Inspired by Nils Bubandt et al.’s “Rubberboot Methods for the Anthropocene,” I  immerse myself in the watery bodies and let my sensory apparatuses guide me. During this process, I allow ideas to naturally surface and take form. On the journey unexpectedly I am confronted with my physical vulnerability and my bodily fluids out of sync. This revelation broadens my perspective, leading me to consider the interconnected urbanized and inner human waters within the greater web of entanglements. 

Ideas for this work materialize through analog photographic techniques, including photograms and chemigrams, taken at the water’s edge as well as using scientific methods for hydro-probing and testing blending art and science in my exploration.

Excerpt by Astrida Neimanis and diary by me.

Internationally sought-after semiconductors require tons of water for their production. But where does the water come from? And who gains access to it and on what terms?

Advanced semiconductors are largely manufactured at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company(TSMC). However, the profit growth of TSMC is much more predictable than the rainfall in Taiwan in the past decades. Su Yu Hsin addresses the water network in Hsinchu, Taiwan in her video Particular Waters which is accompanied with four dummy wafers imprinted with ocean satellite imagery. With an environmental focus, she underscores the complexity of global semiconductor supply chains from the perspective of water and scale. Insights gained through field research in collaboration with Prof. Ya-Chung Chuang of the National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University, the hydrosocial engagement of semiconductor manufacturing and its ecological consequences are strongly incorporated into her artistic work.

Computer chips are hard to see, politically and materially, even though the pandemic shed light on their supply chains. In her popular manifesto, Donna Haraway brings up the working conditions of “ women in the integrated circuit ” and places the chip in a history of governance and exploitation. “ The silicon chip is a surface for writing…Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization…has turned out to be about power.” Microchips have since become the most expensive part in smartphones and a signifier for global capitalism and the current state of world politics. Following Haraway and updating her feminist approach to computing technologies, artist Su Yu Hsin explores historical and material avenues to critique the massive consumption of resources involved in the making of chips. Her focus is on water. In one narrative sequence in her film, she shadows a female worker at TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), the world’s largest chip manufacturer in Taiwan, founded in the late 1980s by Morris Chang, who for several decades had worked with Texas Instruments. His business model was to offer semiconductor manufacturing as a service. 

The protagonist in Particular Waters, a research-based fiction film, is a truck driver transporting water from other areas to the factory – as TSMC did during the drought induced by climate change in 2021 – and back to the banks of the Toucian River. In the course of this sensitively scripted film, the driver disobeys her instructions – performing an act of resistance for the actual benefit of humans and nature ( something the film highlights rather than pointing in the abstract to the legal controls that need to be applied to industrial water usage). Global telecommunications and the AI industry rely on TSMC for the scale and precision of its product, while at the same time, owing to tense US-China relations, there is a shift toward onshoring production and (re)establishing manufacturing sites in the US, Korea, and Europe. Local activist groups have criticized the company and protested against its massive water consumption, irresponsible handling of wastewater, and the environmental damage this causes, resulting in a lack of water to supply their needs.

Written by Vera Tollman in the exhibition catalogue Image Ecology published by Spector Books.

Description form the artist’s website: Particular Waters – SU Yu Hsin

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2023

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2023

The Pond is a multimedia installation that seeks to reimagine and provide an alternate version to the diorama often seen in natural history museums. Fusing mimicry and speculative fiction, the exhibition explores and exposes the various nuanced artificial elements often concealed in the traditional presentation of dioramas, making commentary on the exploitative notions that the diorama unintentionally conveys. Using augmented reality, large scale video projection, multi-screen video, immersive sound, a holographic display, and inkjet prints, The Pond mirrors the complex multi-layered artifice inherent in traditional dioramas in order to create the illusion of a pond ecosystem, populated with hybrid creatures, inviting viewers to explore the intricate interplay between human-made environments and the natural world while challenging our understanding of nature.

Supported by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant. The Pond premiered at the 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image.

Description from the artist’s website: The Pond [2023] – Bianca Shonee Arroyo

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2023

Bringing to life the ethos of Ehua’s latest release on Nervous Horizon, “Aquamarine” is the multidisciplinary visual project directed by Matteo Zamagni accompanying the opening track of the homonymous EP inspired by the colour and motion of water.

Carrying out a study of the movement of corals, algae and jellyfish and of the different physical limitations these organisms experience with movement director Viola Bruni, Ehua transmutes into a mythological hybrid creature who exists and explores the surrounding environment through movement in a metaphorical, zero gravity limbo between immobility and complete freedom.

The sculpture-like costume — hand sewn by Ehua, designed and handcrafted from liquid latex with Zamagni — is the protagonist of the video: a coral reef of imaginary biological organisms which grows and lives in symbiosis with Ehua’s body as it moves harnessing the ocean currents.

A surreal journey into the life of imaginary codependent ecosystems, the video is the result of Zamagni and Ehua’s joint creative efforts from dancing, to costume design, handcrafting, filmmaking and 3D art.

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“Bodies of Water” explores the fluidity and transformative nature of movement through a unique blend of dance and cutting-edge AI technology. In the choreography, dancers perform complex sequences that are later enhanced in post-production using AI tools. This integration allows for the creation of visually captivating effects where the dancers’ bodies seamlessly transition into water, symbolizing themes of transformation, adaptability, and the interconnectedness of human and natural worlds. 

Movement;

@sakeemathecrook

@phoenixchasem

@_.giles_

Audio;

@bartholomew__mason

Bodies of water… Swipe for video →→→ Movement; @sakeemathecrook @phoenixchasem @_.giles_ Audio; @bartholomew__mason… | Instagram

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[The work premiered during the conference Deep Sea Babies: Navigating Between Utopias and Dystopias for the Blue Planet organized by the Pedagogical University of Krakow in cooperation with The Intermedia Department at The Academy of Fine Arts in Podbrzezie Gallery in April 2023]

A feminist-queer collective Lux Æterna (Karina Gorzkowska, Yana Maroz, Agata Polak, Katarzyna Oczkowska) proposes interdisciplinary and intermedia action in the form of a hydrofeminist live act at the intersection of the real and the virtual worlds. The starting point is performing water body that comes from space. According to the principle that everything is a flow, physical space moves and flows toward virtual space and vice versa. Physical space and the experienced reality evolve in the specific laboratory conditions of the transdisciplinary conference: the reality of a specific space and time immersing humans in a dystopic state we want to transgress. Through the experience of the postmedia installation and performance, the collective seeks the possibility of infecting dystopia with a sustainable water utopia. It is specifically a techno-eco utopia enhanced with VR space offering the opportunity for the embodiment of queer eco-avatars. The work is inspired by the xenofeminist manifesto and hydrofeminism, both in terms of theoretical and practical action.

The performative action consists of three acts.

The first is a visual and audio infection of dystopian reality: improvised music is produced by synthesizers and enhanced with 2D and 3D visualizations. Following the principles of collective work and the idea of equality that comes with the flow, each member of Lux Æterna is equally responsible for the performance’s musical and visual layers.

The second act is the gradual appearance of the designed water VR space in the visual layer, designed for the conference in line with the idea of ​​recycling. This part is based on the previous VR projects by members of the collective. The idea of recycling guides every aspect of performance production (visualization, VR design, costumes).  

The third act is a collective transition of water bodies into VR water bodies navigating in space in a headset. The idea is to create choreography at the intersection of utopia and dystopia. Performing bodies embody and visualize the multisensory physical space, simultaneously present and performing [in] the VR space. The experience is available to the audience through the image from the projectors. Inside the water environment of VR traversed through deep virtual babies, the theoretical background of the project is also included in the form of 3D texts. The text layer (e.g., by Astrida Neimanis) is generated when we interact with objects. After the presentation, the VR headset was made available to the participants of the conference to practice the embodiment of deep virtual babies’ reality.

An interactive environment created using 3ds max and Unreal software. The project puts the player in the role of a castaway who finds himself on a deserted island overgrown with tall bushes and inhabited by insect-like creatures. The person using the project finds a collection of elements that are interpretations of children’s toys, remnants of the Anthropocene and whirling insects, accompanied by the melody of a lullaby. These objects allude to the need for arrangement and redirection of attention, which is reinforced in humans from birth as a cure for anxiety and loneliness.

In the island’s playground, the player must manipulate objects to move through the environment. The process of rearranging the island’s elements involves clearing, depositing and changing the current of the river surrounding the island, which leads to a reduction in the insect population and then lowering the water level. Every move of the player, that is, every interference with the island’s ecosystem has negative consequences, and the player is responsible for his impact on the environment.

The project refers to the disastrous hydrological situation in Poland. It is contributed not only by climate change, but primarily by human activity. Catchment areas – i.e. areas from which water flows down watercourses into a single body of water, such as seas, rivers and lakes – have been heavily transformed and improperly drained. This, combined with heavy rains, prolonged periods of drought and faulty hydrological measures, means that most water is lost irretrievably. The water footprint of a statistical Pole is nearly 4,000 liters, and 80% of consumption comes from surface water. As a consequence of these factors, 50% of the country’s land area is at risk of drought and could become a desert in the future.

https://izakoczanowska.com/Evaporation

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2022

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2022

Lagunas is a fictional & interactive installation, a triptych between memory, death, and water. Prehistoric landscapes are the scenario for the chronicles of a drowning man, disclosing the rarity of water on Planet Earth.

Lagunas is dark, still, and somber. Silent landscapes, dying fish, the water of a thick dark lake, seaweed and mud cover the depths. Below the surface, a man drowns. From the abyss, archaic rocks are attracted by magnetic forces. Drilling machines emerge, turning between the cliffs, intercepting the stones in levitation and destroying the rocks, which fall back into the water. The abandoned body of the man, receives the impacts of the stones, wakes up, strives to save his life, and loses consciousness…

The drilling machines embody the hydraulic fracturing techniques used to extract fossils fuels from the shale rock of the Earth. The water contamination process consequence of the hydraulic rupture is visualized from close-up animations to larger-scale images where the fracking fluid travels through the pipelines reaching the groundwater. High-pressure impulsions cause the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where fuels flow into the surface of the Earth, while rests of toxic fluids contaminate the water of the subsoil of the Earth.

Three water valves are used in Lagunas as interactive devices. When the water valves are rotated, image and sound are activated. Further than interacting with image and sound events, the level/amount of interaction of the participants is continuously analyzed. An interactive scenario adapts to the behavior of the spectators, allowing variations and deviations on the fictional order. The water tabs are used all along the experience as triggers & controllers for the interactive scenario of the installation.

The lakes and mountain landscapes have been shoot in Colombia, in the “Chingaza Natural National Park”, a natural reserve located in the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes, in the northeast of Bogotá. The underwater images were filmed in a lake in the Netherlands, using a high-speed cinema camera (Phantom-Flex) and shoot at 300fps. The landscapes & underwater images are composited with 3D (CGI) generated images.

Description from the artist’s website: Lagunas | Laura Colmenares Guerra (ulara.org)

A world where water is the basis of our #coresystem.
Part of a collection of visuals #waterlove #LIQUIDLOVE #sexualwater for #TEChnoKaos sounds. Transmuting realities describe my sound environment. Sometimes it’s ambient sound overload, then there’s my mental noise.
I try to explore the duality between
the digital/virtual and the real world as an art installation.
Basing my videos on soundscape, creating collages to generate imaginary as realistic effects combined with images of post-human blue worlds with post-natural wild aquatic ecosystems reminds me of what D’Escrivan calls “imaginary hearing”. Presence and audio
in an “immersive” visual reality that I call “x 999 x attractions” : which currently has 4 video-sequences or as I call them; “minutes d’amour dans l’eau”:

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Months and seasons pass, all indifferent. Love blooms, love dies. Time marches on,
despite the withering of passion, the suffering of love. How do we recognize the injustice
– of our countries or our desires, when all this is forgotten?
This fragility, the awareness that everything is ephemeral, that even tenderness and carnal desires can be shattered, is the true feeling of these short films.
Our days will pass, we will be far away and soon forget.
The camera and they are still, only their eyes flicker. The eyes of artists who care,
care for the water in their gaze with strength.Berlin- Murcia (Spain) 2022-23
Virginia Díaz. Project FUTURO3000.
WEBSITE: www.futuro3000.com

The aim of the project is to create a multimedia work that is responsive to the movement of the user. I want to create an immersive environment that is a simulation of immersion and relationship with water.


The artistic tools and means I mainly use in the Immersion project are videos from under the water. Aesthetically, we experience water in different ways. I wanted to show its ability to reflect the world. Such as how the mirror effect of water takes many forms, from strongly defined, clear reflections to those that are completely blurred. And how we interact with water. By presenting video footage, I show the extraordinary underwater world. The journeys that, I made in the summer of 2021, gave me the opportunity to record and collect documentation of different types of marine waters, from different areas of Europe. To get the viewer to interact with my four-channel installation, I use a Kinect camera. Thanks to this technology and the Touchdesigner software, the user’s body, scanned by the camera, goes as a digital image, a collection of dots and digits into virtual reality and interacts with the video footage. The design of the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment further enhances the immersive experience with its cubic structure and projection projected from outside the cubic room. As the installation is interactive, the user becomes the choreographer of the projection. Through his or her movement, he or she triggers transformations; the more dynamically he or she moves, the more transformations there are or become, like splashing water. Personally, being in the space of the installation, I try to tell a short story of being immersed in water, and how the water reacts to my body. Performance is a very important part of the work, happening on and in front of the screen. As a result and in the digital space of the installation, in the program and in the image. Video art, performance art, and the themes of hydro art are the currents into which my work fits.


The significance of my project can be seen in two aspects. On the one hand, it is a purely aesthetic-technological, immersive journey into an underwater world. On the other hand, the work draws’ attention to the relationship that occurs between man and water. What influence do we have on it, and it on us? By extension, what impact do we have on the environment? The body in relation to water and its different kinetics is also an important element. How the physical properties of water interact with our body.


The components of the installation ‘Immersion’ are video footage, Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, Kinect camera, user, computer, Touchdesigner visual programming environment, Resolume software, sounds and text work.

Immersion
image

It is a soundscape of the Ślepiotka River catchment which flows through Katowice. It is a kind of record of the layers of human history and the natural environment preserved on an audio carrier.

Transferring the acoustics of the catchment, with all its environmental contexts, was possible thanks to the field recording method with the use of the ZOOM H5 sound recorder. Sonification of landscape, related to the field called the ecology of music, helps to notice the multitude of elements, both positive and negative, connected with noise pollution. The author managed to register, among other things, the low drone sounds of helicopters flying over the nearby hospital, as well as a close encounter with a pack of wild boars using the riverbed as an ecological corridor. Thanks to this function of the river, animals, plants, and fungi can move safely between their habitats in the city’s surroundings. The waterfront areas of Ślepiotka are among the most interesting in this industrial part of Upper Silesia. This river has its origins in the ‘Ochojec’ nature reserve, which, despite the degradation of the environment, still shelters some remnants of the old Silesian forest. In its shadow hide the relict habitats of the protected Streptopus amplexifolius and Meripilus giganteus. Another rare, protected species appearing in the Ślepiotka Valley is the giant horsetail, which can grow almost 2 m high. It is a reminder not only of the riparian forests but also of the wet meadows.

The album has been divided into three acts referring successively to three different areas of the studied river together with the corresponding geographical coordinates:

Source: 50°12’17.0″N 19°00’14.5″E 08:08

Middle: 50°12’59.2″N 18°58’44.2″E 04:34

Estuary: 50°13’42.7″N 18°55’27.5″E 10:11

It is available for public listening via Bandcamp.

https://plk423.bandcamp.com/album/wzmocnienie-g-osu-rzeki-miejskiej-lepiotka-2022?fbclid=IwAR0mHWkfFDwN67Ij45sMb-9HrWrbbmhuz7iZgJ95vb-1GVjxk8J_B1XwXFo

It is a part of the bachelor’s thesis entitled: Natural and socio-cultural characteristics of the Ślepiotka river basin, carried out at the University of Silesia, Faculty of Natural Sciences, in cooperation with Dr. Piotr Siwek (Director of the Aquamatics – interdisciplinary management of water environments).

35 mm film, digitalized, 2:13 min

I created this piece using an analog toy camera that allows me to record using regular 35mm film.
I went to a beach I used to go to when I was little and I took the camera with me into the sea. I submerged myself in the water just for a few seconds, enough time for the water to touch the film and start transforming it.

What you can see in the video is the imprint of the salty water on the film and how this encounter damaged and/or transformed what I had recorded. However, the video preserves a very very aqueous aesthetic, even dreamlike. 

I edited this piece together with sounds I had been recording on different shores while researching my project “El Mar son las Raíces” in which I explore the interconnection between memory, grief, and the Mediterranean. 

https://vimeo.com/720600868

VR interactive project

DNA is capable of storing digital data better than silicon in our computers. It fits millions of terabytes in a few grams suspension in the water, minimizing the ecological cost of the global network of digital databases. The binary code only needs to be decoded into the synthesized DNA strands. Let’s imagine a digital Blue Humanities Archive, ultimately preserved in a fluid form, where the digital is merely a transfer to its original character. The completed work in virtual online reality will be the inauguration of the blue humanities archive. What the digital data transferred to nucleic acids will be is in the process of conceptual work. The “Blue Humanities Archive” has been initiated by Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz and aims to collect and make creative use of different forms of underwater documentary studies of Polish aquatic environments (photos, 3D scans, videos, found footage, AR visualizations, VR, MR). The materials will serve researchers of various scientific disciplines, educators and artists. The music created for the artist’s installation has been built on the basis of DNA sonification research. Sound design: Kat Zavada

The demo of the project was launched as VR Interactive platform at Art Electonica: New Digital Deal 2021

https://ars.electronica.art/newdigitaldeal/en/the-blue-humanities-archive/

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2021

Uninterrupted

Nettie Wild, Betsy Carson, Rae Hull, Michael Brockington, James Acres, Elie Zananiri, Anthony Diehl, Athan Merrick, Nic Teichrob, Owen Belton, Daniel Pellerin, Velcrow Ripper, Jay White

2021

In 2017, as part of Canada 150+ celebrations, the 24-minute cinematic spectacle was unfurled across the almost one kilometre span of Vancouver’s Cambie Bridge.

It was the culmination of four+ years of planning and production: underwater cinematography, digital mapping of the bridge, groundbreaking editing, outreach to salmon communities and the support of a wonderful network of partners.

We also gratefully acknowledge the first stewards of Pacific salmon:
UNINTERRUPTED was filmed on the unceded & traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), Hupač́asath and the Little Shuswap Lake Indian Band of the Secwepemc Nation. It is presented this summer on the ancestral and unceded homelands of hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.

Uninterrupted-VR immerses viewers in a spectacle that combines art, technology and nature.  At the heart of the experience is a journey that has been repeated uninterrupted in B.C. waters since before recorded time.  Originally a site-specific public art event,  UNINTERRUPTED was  mapped and projected onto the Cambie Bridge in 2017.  Throughout the summer, audiences totalling 30,000 “travelled” upstream  – with silver Sockeye turning to crimson as the salmon returned to their freshwater birthplace to spawn, repeating a cycle that has nourished land, water, animals, and people for millions of years.

Now Uninterrupted-VR moves the bridge and the journey into virtual reality headsets – and our summer 2021 series moves the experience to outdoor locations throughout Metro Vancouver.  You can still enjoy the remarkable experience with others, as our outdoor series presents multiple synchronized VR showings for small audiences.   It’s free but you must book in advance.

Description from the artist’s website: About The 2021 Shows – Uninterrupted: A cinematic spectacle.

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2021

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2021

Open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the earth and its weather systems using DIY tools. They weave speculative storytelling with low cost hardware and open-source software to transform our relations to a planet in climate crisis.

Open-weather travelled to the Inner Hebridean Isle of Mull with two 137 MHz turnstile antennas. On 18 July 2021 at around 11 o’clock in the evening, among the sheep, seabirds and tidal waves, they used both antennas to sense the hertzian spaces around them. Between 198 KHz and 150 MHz they encountered radio amateurs, a NOAA satellite, Shannon VOLMET, medium wave AM stations, morse code and RTTY data transmissions. The audio work was broadcast during the STWST48x7 festival, online on pnode.org and at Stadwerkstatt in Linz, Austria.

Description from the artists’ website: Make me a signal – open-weather

What are the changing conditions for Archaeology in underwater ecosystems? Can challenges be predicted and solutions imagined using Machine Learning?
With the passage of time, underwater artifacts are encrusted with coral, algae or other marine organisms. How do human activities and pollutions undermine these natural environments? What will our underwater heritage be like in the future?
The project: “Future Memories of Deep Water” explores how algorithms can be used for predicting new entanglements between underwater artifacts and the changing environment where they are discovered. We reflect on current problems and dangers for marine environments, such as “plasticrust” and plastic pollution.
Built upon experimental speculation, Future Memories of Deep Water calls for the protection of threatened marine ecosystems and aims to create awareness and encourage preservation of cultural heritage.

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2021

from Doggerland is a shared practice by Gemma Gore (UK) and Jo Willoughby (NL). With a practice-based-research approach, we study states of suspension throughout the submerged metaphysical site of Doggerland.

Enquiring with our research questions:
Does the intertidal live within us? If we perceive the marsh or the estuary ecotones as liminal, how might this in-betweenness or transitional place become a site for complex understandings of climate change, climate grief, climate hope and climate action?

We explore the ecologies that our digital and in-real-life correspondences touch as we connect through cultures of water. Our website changes, a kind of durational performance like the sea, it continues to shift, ebb and flow, we use it as a studio space stretching across time and space.

https://fromdoggerland.hotglue.me/

image

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2021

This ecosexual wedding performance took place at the Great Salt Lake in 2021, near the iconic land art sculpture Spiral Jetty (1970) by Robert Smithson.The ceremony was graced by the presence of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens who launched the ecosexual movement in art, and was carried out in collaboration with Bonnie Baxter and Jaimi Butler, the scientists from the Great Salt Lake Institute, Westminster College, in Salt Lake City. Joy Brooke Fairfield directed the wedding performance under the difficult circumstances of heat and drought the unique body of GSL water is now experiencing due to climate change.

Through this performance, humans were married to the tiny crustaceans the whole GLS ecosystem depends on. The brine shrimp brides were represented digitally through the Augmented Reality application Artemia designed to visualize these aquatic wildlife critters in contrast to modern science’s goals and consumer imagery of the Sea Monkeys, a commodified instant life-form. The wedding prioritized the representation of the multispecies community and connected ecosexual to hydrofeminism. It emphasized the need for alliances between artists and scientists to make brine shrimp lovable and visible in cyberspace beyond the global brine shrimp farming industry.

https://justynagorowska.com/Cyber-wedding-to-the-brine-shrimp

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2020

Water rhythms is a story of climate change told by ice and water. It is a story about the dualism of water, the universal connector of nature and humans. It is also an intergenerational story of the rapid change and depletion of our glaciers and freshwater sources worldwide. 

Glaciers and ice sheets are the world’s water towers; only 2.5% of water on Earth is freshwater, and of this, 99% comes from glaciers and ice sheets. As glaciers worldwide shrink and disappear in response to climate change, water availability and water quality are being threatened for the billions of humans and more-than-humans who live downstream. As the ice disappears, these water rhythms are also shifting and fading from view. 

Michele Koppes (Glaciologist, Geographer, Climate Scientist) and Susie Ibarra (Composer, Percussionist, Sound Artist), have been sonically mapping changes in glacier runoff from the source to the sink, from the glaciated mountains to the ocean, from some of the world’s most important water towers, including the Coast Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Indian Himalaya. Their fieldwork and recordings have been supported to date by Bennington College, the University of British Columbia, the Asian Cultural Council, TED, the Fine Acts Foundation and a National Geographic Explorer Storytelling grant. Through these field recordings taken from both above and below the ice and water, and including the sounds and music of the people who live along their shores, they are capturing the sounds of climate change on our lifeblood, freshwater, and listening to the stories the water is telling us about a world of increasing ecological precarity.

Humans are inextricably connected to the Earth’s freshwater; the same rhythms of glacial meltwater that flow from the mountains to the sea flow through our bodies, our histories and our music. In recording the sounds of glacier melt, we discovered that these sounds were not simply ambient, but indeed very musical. They have precise rhythms, a precise tempo/bpm (beats per minute). These tempos match the sweet spot at which pieces of music from all over the world are created and played. They also match our heartbeats at birth. Our connection to water is hence so much more intimate than we think. A world losing its flowing freshwater is not only a world of increasing ecological precarity. A world losing its flowing water is hence a world losing its music, its culture and its humanity.

At first glance, River Code (“cho-deh”) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia is a surreal landscape colonized by plastic, with its citizens believing their water is clean enough for daily use. While the root of the problem is complex and multi-faceted (income level, pollution as colonialism, and lack of government infrastructure) it can ultimately be addressed at the social-cultural level, requiring empathy to live and cope in toxic conditions. In this trilogy of works, the artist reflects on the polluted landscape of the river and the local citizens who live densely and intimately in its watery embrace. While water is the medium that connects us all, it is also the primary carrier of the industrial molecules, simultaneously queering both the river and the bodies of its inhabitants. Can the marginalized people of River Code care for the health of the river as if it were their own bodies? Can mutation and shape-shifting be acknowledged as legitimate strategies for survival?

The installation includes a rotating mandala projection comprised on trash found in the river, symbolizing the constant recombination of plastic particles inside our own bodies. The installation also includes a bamboo sculpture of River Code filled with blue agar that invites microbial contamination juxtaposed against contained samples of bioremediating fungi. Next, the river is flanked by a set of two latex sculptures embodying the porosity of skin as it is embedded with trash from the river. And lastly, the installation plays a child’s recording of the story “Bagaimana Dunia Berhenti Bergerak” or “How the World Stopped Moving,” a story about the river who speaks to a little girl and tells her it is hurting because it cannot digest all the plastic, so it must return it all to humanity.

Created for the Yogyakarta International Contemporary Visual Arts Festival ARTJOG: Arts in Common curated by Agung Hujatnikajennong and Ignatia Nilu. Photos courtesy of ARTJOG MMXIX at Jogja national Museum

Description from the artist’s website: Milik Bersama Rekombinan – Mary Maggic Official

024

2019

024

2019

2019

The sound installation prepared in collaboration with the Swiss sound artist and composer, Denim Szram, was created during Diana Lelonek’s residency as part of the Culturescapes festival in Basel. The recordings created by the artist on three melting Alpine glaciers: du Rhone, Aletsch and Morteratsch composed into a song by Denim Szram are a kind of symphony of disappearing glaciers. The sound of a slowly trickling catastrophe, whose arrival is hardly spectacular, is blurred, present everywhere and nowhere, and gives rise to anxiety and is lined with fear. Alpine glaciers are disappearing very quickly; some of them have already gone forever. A trip to the glacier, listening to the ubiquitous sounds of uniform dripping, resembles a countdown. The sound is a direct sign of irretrievable loss. The multi-channel sound installation presented in an empty exhibition space, fills the room with sound, while the classic “white cube” form has not been filled with objects. The emptiness is a kind of manifesto but also a question: what is the place of art in the climate crisis? It is also a question about the overproduction of objects within the process of production art, the art world being a market that constantly craves new projects, trends and works. The production race sometimes lacks the space for us to stop and feel.

Description from the artist’s website: Melting Gallery – Diana Lelonek

“Meandering River” is an audiovisual installation comprised of real-time visuals generated by an algorithm and music composed by an A.I. This digital artwork makes change perceivable by creating a unique awareness of time. Spanning over multiple screens, the piece reinterprets the shifting behaviours of rivers by visualizing and sonifying their impact on the surface of the earth.

The audiovisual installation creates a bird’s eye view of a landscape. This orientation conceptualizes a new human perspective on space and time, in an attempt to decipher the unpredictable patterns. By experiencing it from an influential perspective, the real-time visuals demonstrate what is happening on a larger scale.

Based on a bespoke algorithm, the rippling and oscillating movement inherent in the generated imagery, provides a vantage point that transforms an understanding of progress, to examine the rhythm of natural forces. As the evolving patterns of “Meandering River” emerge, the viewer is left with a humbling sense of the unpredictability of change and the beauty of nature.

Over decades, flowing river structures shift as water erodes the ground, forms a riverbed, and carries soil deposits with it to other locations. The effect of depositing and eroding the landscape changes colour formations depending on the shade and quality of the ground.

By investigating academic and scientific research that examine this natural phenomenon, different algorithms were developed to authentically simulate the unpredictable movements of rivers and reinterpret their organic structures, rhythmic fluctuations and visual materiality.

During the visual research and development process, a bespoke rendering pipeline was created, allowing an iterative visual exploration and composition. Various shaders and algorithms were applied in real-time as graphical layers to simulate natural appearances such as hydraulic and thermal erosion, oxbow lakes and meander scars. Additional post-processing passes like surface materiality, vegetation and lighting enabled the final landscape compositions to reach the visual granularity and quality intended for the work.

Description from the artist’s website: onformative — Meandering River

The discovery of one of the districts of Jelenia Góra (Poland) encapsulates the issues of Polish national memory on a microscale. The district, which once held a concentration camp within its boundaries, is a post-traumatic space. More than 32 families live there today. Studying the visual aspects of both the camps and the modern residential area architecture reveals deep ties between the modern-day landscape and the historical trauma that permeates it. Differences in the architecture of these two periods reveal how the local residents’ identity was being built. The purpose of this project is to ask whether the lack of cues that would connect the modern-day community to the space unique history is laying a false fundament that makes it more difficult to cope with the trauma, or whether, perhaps, it liberates the community from the traumatic memories hegemony, allowing them to reclaim the space and define it as they wish, leaving history behind.

The well’s design is a symbolic exoneration of the negative housing zone.
The water drawn out of the well is natural mineral water with healing powers. Their presence is a perverse sign of changeable nature, almost following the pattern of the inhabitants of the district. The well is made of granite (prisoners of the camp worked on the extraction of this stone), and at the same time it is the principal ingredient of mineral water.

Work shows the area from 1944 (during the existence of the concentration camp) and images of the district of the “Fampa” at Wojewódzka Street in 2018.

https://www.jagodakwiatkowska.pl/

027

2010

027

2010

2010

The Glowing Sushi Cooking Show uses everyday ingredients and some simple kitchen chemistry to explore cutting edge biotechnology. In each episode, they show viewers how to easily replicate experiments in their own homes.

 http://www.glowingsushi.com

Americans consume the products of genetically modified organisms in industrially produced soda and cheese everyday, but the genetically modified organisms we eat are usually invisible. Glowing Sushi allows the eating of GMOs a very visible act, prompting viewers to consider and debate what is innovative and acceptable within the life sciences. Is inserting a transgene innovative? Is taking transgenic fish out of the lab and selling them innovative? Is marketing them as pets innovative? Is selling a pet fish with terms of service innovative? Is eating them innovative? Are these acceptable practices? 

We believe that Glowing Sushi is involves many levels of innovation. The US Food and Drug Administration only recently developed comprehensive recommendations for approving genetically modified animals for sale as drugs. GloFish are not consumed as drugs, but the US FDA was willing to be an innovative regulator and continues to approve their sale anyway. Yorktown Technology saw an opportunity to take an animal out of the lab and make it a product. Although originally intended as an environmental sensor, Yorktown Technologies innovated by patenting and trademarking the fish and marketing them as pets. Glowing sushi innovates one step further by making Genetically Modified ingredients more visible (they glow!).

If consumers are unhappy about how GMOs are regulated they can always write to the USDA or their congressperson and support mandatory labeling of GMOs, or attempt to stop the approval of Aqua Bounty Salmon. Companies should remember that individuals will always find their own use for new technologies, even if it is not the use that companies intended.

Description from the artist’s website: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://genomicgastronomy.com/work/2010-2/glowing-sushi/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1713445277215991&usg=AOvVaw0N3MV8PLct8XUdUOOtzq-W

Mississippi River Oxygen is a kinetic artwork that showcases
the real-time data visualization of the oxygen levels in the iconic
Mississippi waterway, which is lowering due to climate change.
The artwork displays more or fewer bubbles, dynamically
changing in size and quantity, depending on the current oxygen
content in the water.

In addition to the data visualization, when you approach the
artwork, you see your reflection in the piece, making you part of
the story and art. This interactive feature enhances the
artwork’s ability to engage its audience and inspire action
towards environmental preservation.

Description from the artist’s website: Mississippi River Oxygen by BREAKFAST (breakfaststudio.com)

029

2005

029

2005

2005

This 360 foot long and eight foot tall mural is an extended semi-autobiographical dialogue, with stories and anecdotes, plays between two characters, a ‘Lagoon Maker’ and a ‘witness’, and serves to establish the philosophical basis for the ecological argument in many later works. Beginning in Sri Lanka with an edible crab and ending in the Pacific with the greenhouse effect, it seeks ever-larger frames for a consideration of survival. It looks at experimental science, the marketplace and megatechnology, finally posing the question, “What are the conditions necessary for Survival” and concluding that it is necessary to reorient consciousness around a different database.

A work in over 50 parts, partially commissioned by and in the collection of John Kluge, Metromedia. Extensive catalog with 45 color plates, essays by Carter Ratcliff and Michel de Certeau and biography and bibliography. Main exhibitions at the Johnson Museum of Cornell University and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lavilette Amazon. French Translation, Jacques Leenhardt, Collection Centre Pompidou.

The Lagoon Cycle was also recreated as a complex hand-made book. The Lagoon Cycle was designed to envelop. The Book of the Lagoons was designed to be intimate and accessible. 

Description from the artist’s website: The Lagoon Cycle — The Harrison Studio

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