‘Voices from the Southern Ocean’ is a Living Data installation that travels with an on-line interface for people to physically and virtually interact with and respond to stories told on country and in the ocean. Its journey traces Whale Dreaming stories and combines these with scientific understandings of whale migrations from Antarctica and around Australia. Its purpose is to inspire and inform people to tell their own stories of relationship to the natural world.
As Yorta Yorta man Tiriki Onus explains, “…all around the coastline of Australia really, seem to have these whale stories, and knowledge of these whale stories too, because when we were trading much more, not just in tangible material cultural objects, but the intent, or story in song, these stories travelled inland and across country as well. So how that looks, as an exercise in mapping is really really powerful… if you don’t know the stories of country, if you don’t know your songs, how do you live in that country? How do you persist for tens of thousands of years, for thousands and thousands of generations, if you’re not intimately connected to that place and that knowledge therein?”
Foundation work for ‘Voices’ are Living Data installations that immerse people in flows of scientific data and cultural knowledge.
For ‘Voices from the Southern Ocean’, animations, installations, performances and picture books will be made to give voice to ocean creatures and their relatives on land, through conversations, workshops and presentations with Indigenous knowledge holders, artists and Western scientists. The project has begun and will culminate in 2022 with publication of the International Panel of Climate Change (IPPC) Report, and the 2023 Global Stocktake to measure and communicate how countries are meeting the Paris Agreement targets.
The online interface will map and track the creatures’ explorations and invite responses; Algae, Krill, Fish, Snake, Bird and Whale will travel from Antarctica to Australia to explore how they co-evolved through time and space with natural cycles of global climate change driven by Antarctic sea ice. Their stories will reveal connections between health and wellbeing of individuals, communities and the planet.
Whale will lead and narrate a journey from the sea and then onto land, as in the Whale Dreaming stories of the Yuin and Gumbaynggirr peoples. That journey will reflect how Western scientists understand the evolution of the whale: The whale came from the sea, evolved on land into an almost wolf-like organism and eventually became amphibious and went back into the ocean to become the whales we see today.
As project lead I will facilitate the co-design of the installation and the on-line interface. As co-creator I will animate the story of Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) that we know from Western science, combined with how I imagine her experience as keystone creature of the Southern Ocean in relationship with fellow creatures, and with the elements, ocean, land, and air.