Index

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.

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
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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).

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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/

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