About

Inquiry

ABSTRACT - June 2007

It is important to understand what is happening in Antarctica for an understanding of our future. Those who work in Antarctica can show us its landscape from many angles. Such views reveal knowledge sprung from scientific observation and aesthetic response.

Public dialogue can occur between and with an Antarctic community and artists. Animation, the visual language of change, can be used to respond literally and metaphorically, to the written, visual and aural texts of those who work in Antarctica. Examples include 24 days, an animated Antarctic journal (Roberts 2003) which demonstrates how an individuals response to Antarctic landscape is shaped by an understanding of other perspectives. The on-line Antarctic Thesaurus and Journey will contain and animate multiple perspectives of Antarctic workers.

The aim of this research is first to collect evidence of what the scientists, and others who have worked in Antarctica, have observed and responded to in the landscape; second to devise an on-line animated interface through which to engage viewers with both the science and poetics of the data. Animation will be used to increase understanding of changes in Antarctic landscape as identified in the records and accounts provided by Antarctic base workers - the people who have studied it, and physically endured a full year of its changing landscape.

The hypothesis of the research is that the documented observations and experiences of Antarctic base workers will reveal a wide range of perspectives of the changes in the Antarctic landscape, and that animation - the visual language of change - can provide access to understanding these perspectives.

Methods of inquiry will build upon the structured movement improvisation of Hanny Exiner, and Al Wunder's Theatre of the Ordinary. Human gesture, improvised within an Antarctic landscape, amongst the words created to describe it, will be animated to explore notions of distance and connection between humankind and the landscape.

Working with this material provides the animator with kinaesthetic, pragmatic and aesthetic information for understanding and communicating change.

ABSTRACT - August 2007

This inquiry bridges the fields of Visual Art, Movement Improvisation and Data Visualisation.

The proposition is that animation can be used to show profound human connections to the Antarctic landscape.

Animations are being made through human movement, drawing, writing, sound and assemblage, in response to scientific data and poetic texts of Antarctic expeditioners. Animations are revealing cycles and transformations that have been observed and experienced in the Antarctic landscape. Drawing the Antarctic landscape to human scale through human gesture allows for profound connections to be made with changes.

Artists currently dealing with issues relevant to this inquiry include video artist David Buckland (The cold library of ice, 2004), choreographer Siobhan Davies (Endangered species, 2006), mixed media artist Stephen Eastaugh (Travailogues 2000-2), datascape topographer Simon Pockley (Flight of Ducks, 1995-2007) and landscape animator Hobart Hughes (The wind calls your name, 2006).

Early lines of inquiry that relate to the current research include the work of choreographer/movement analyst Rudolph Laban (1879-1953), sculptor Lazlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), animator Norman McLaren (1914-1987), computer animator John Whitney (1917-1995), dancer/choreographer Hanny Exiner (?-2006), and one of the first Australian artists to work in Antarctica, Bea Maddock (b.1934).