Academic Review 01

Writing the Report helped me to think through a plan for the next 12 months:

To animate changes in the Antarctic landscape through the perspectives of humans, animals, and the land itself

To explore ways to link these three perspectives on-line

and

To build threads from these perspectives that invite contributions from the Antarctic community, artists, and others.

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Report:

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B1. Aims of higher degree research program:

The aim of the research is to animate some of the profound human connections that have been made to the Antarctic landscape through: first collecting evidence of what the scientists, and others who have worked in Antarctica, have observed and responded to in the landscape; second devising an on-line animated interface through which to engage viewers with both the science and poetics of the data.

B2. Progress over the last 12 months:

Making objects and animations, writing, and composing the website ‘Antarctic animation’ within which these appear, have taken up the majority of the time spent so far on this project.

In the last 12 months I have also:

Undertaken literature searches at:

The Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge)
The British Library (London)
The Royal College of Art Library (London)
Library of UNSW (University of New South Wales)
The Australian Antarctic Division Library and Data Centre (Tasmania)
The State Library of NSW
and on the The Internet using Google.

Have ascertained that the line of inquiry being followed is not well developed.

Viewed exhibitions, artworks and performances relating to the inquiry including:

Art from a changing Arctic (British Museum, London)
Surrealist Films and the Fischly & Weiss Retrospective (Tate Modern, London)
Sydney Nolan – Antarctic Journey (Mornington Regional Gallery, Victoria)
The Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge)
The Mawson Collection, South Australian Museum (Adelaide)
Antarctica in Black and White – Fred Elliott (State Library of NSW)
Diamond Dust – Michaela Gleave (Kudos Gallery, UNSW)
Aqualux 11 – Peter Charuk (Australia Council, NSW)
Microorganism puppets – Hobart Hughes (Sydney)
Reel Dance Installations #3 (Carriageworks, Sydney)

and:

Met John Hughes at COFA, heard about Rupert Sheldrake’s idea of morphic resonance, and recognised that there is much to be learned from this in its relevance to animating the cycles and changes in Antarctic landscapes.

Met Simon Pockley in Melbourne, and listened to his thoughts on the land as a repository of data. Seeing in his on-line work, ‘Flight of Ducks’, how the topography of the country covered is reflected in the screen design, suggested ideas for an Antarctic interface.

Received detailed feedback and questions on the research proposal by staff at the Royal College of Art (London) during a two-hour examination for entry to PhD. Writing an account of this meeting helped determine present directions.

Met British animator Tim Webb, author of the film ‘A is for Autism’ (1992). He shared his experience of animating with other people’s material. I saw his work as a kind of ‘visual listening’ to people’s different perceptions.

Listened to stories of Antarctic expeditioners and made sketched for animating responses.

Collected scientific data accessible from the internet and explored ways to animate images, graphs and numeric tables.

Taken photographs to time-lapse changes in the urban landscape. I set up a camera mount in the front garden and took shots at the same time daily over three months. The purpose of this was to test systems of recording landscape change. At the time this was set up I had a proposal with the AAD to animate in Antarctica.

Built prototype animation stand and experienced its technical limitations. This contributed to the design and production of a second, more workable device for animating within an A4 field. A large scale device for animation within a 910mm x1470mm field was also constructed.

Experienced technical and organisational challenges collecting accurate visual and audio data. These challenges ranged from accuracy of camera and object registration between shots, electronic issues such as batteries and power supplies, limitations of storage media and file systems, computing hardware and software problems (the motherboard died), and implementation of reliable filing and backup systems. Through experiencing these challenges, I learned how to deal better with data.

Experienced tensions between accuracy and aesthetics when using the data to make objects and animations: the eye may like the aesthetic, but the mind may count.

Met Australian writer Bernadette Hince, author of the ‘The Antarctic Dictionary’ (2000), who gave me permission for her word definitions to be used in the work.

Met American William Fox, author of ‘Terra Antarctica’ (2007), and attended his lecture, ‘Ariel Photography and the Unmapping of the World’. He alerted me to the idea that landscape as foreground, middle ground and background, is a primitive expectation visually hard-wired in our brains for reasons of survival. That expectation lingers.

Met ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) members Jack Ward and Fred Elliott, whose Mawson dairies and drawings I am now working with. Ward’s writing and Elliott’s drawings describe changes they each observed and experienced around Mawson between 1954 and 1955. Through their texts, two views of the one time and place are perceived. Words and images have been selected to become scores for animating cycles and sequences of change in their internal and external landscapes.

Participated in Movement Improvisation workshops with Andrew Morrish at Sydney’s Carriageworks, from which ideas were developed for scripting scores for improvising gestural responses to the Antarctic texts.

Participated in John Hughes’ computer animation workshops at COFA. I learned some techniques to apply for building, articulating and manipulating an electronic puppet. Such a puppet could be used for gesturing in response to the Antarctic texts.

Worked with various techniques, materials and found objects to make objects (drawings, paintings, assemblages), for animating. Techniques included stop motion photography of shadow tracings, object manipulation, pencil drawing, acrylic and oil painting, and metal stamping. Materials included a scrabble set, seed pods from the garden, discarded dress dummies, car parts, bandages, and metal ant caps for house stumps.

Composed computer animations using a range of programmes on different systems: Linux, Windows, Mac: Image Magick, Gimp, Flash, Director, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Pivot, Final Cut Express. I am working across platforms to build animation sequences.

Learned and practiced command-line programming to build and optomise animated gif files for uploading on-line.

Developed the structure of the website and the Blog, and populated these with words, images, cyclic and sequential animations, and commenced on-line interactions with an Antarctic community, artists and others.

B3 List written reports, publications, exhibitions/performances, conference presentations or other achievements in the last 12 months:

In the last 12 months I have:

Presented the animated film ’42 days in Antarctica’ at the UNE (University of New England) international art education conference, Our people, our place, our time (Armidale 2007).

Presented the paper, ‘Animating Antarctic Landscape – Dialogues in art and science’ at the Animated Dialogues Conference (Victorian College of the Arts/Monash University 2007). This paper is currently being peer reviewed for publication in the international Society for Animation Studies journal.

Been invited to join the committee of the Australian chapter of the Society for Animation Studies

Exhibited objects and animations at: Changing Nature (Sydney 2006), the Antarctic Midwinter Festival (Hobart 2007) and M.A.D gallery (Sydney 2007).

Been invited to exhibit work at the Museum of Art at the national University of Tres de Febro, Buenos Aires, March and April 2008.

B4. Goals for the next 12 months:

Over the next 12 months I aim to:

Complete the12 month Antarctic Journey of Jack Ward and Fred Elliott through:

Stop-motion painting and shadow tracing, to accurately animate the cycle of day to night ratios through a year
Working with a musician, artist and dancer, to improvise sounds, drawings and movement gestures, to scores developed from the expeditioners texts
Video recording the improvised gestures
Animating sequences and cycles based on the improvised responses

Begin a collaboration with marine biologist/jeweler Karin Beaumont, to animate changes in the locations and proliferations of Antarctic zooplankton.

Animate changes in sea ice extent as revealed in ice core chemistry, working with visual and numeric data, and information provided by glaciologist Barbara Frankel (AAD/University of Tasmania).

Explore ways to connect these three perspectives (the human, the animal, and the landscape), and integrate them within the on-line work, ‘Antarctic Animation’.

Continue exploring and learning animation techniques and processes.

Continue building links between the Antarctic Thesaurus, the Map and Journeys.

Present selected objects, animations and the on-line work at the the Museum of Art at the National University of Tres de Febro, Buenos Aires (March – April 2008).

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Posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007