2007 Shanghai Science and Art Exposition <http://www.science-art.com.cn>
May 10-15 2007
Curated by Danny Butt - http://www.dannybutt.net
Artists and works:
Douglas Bagnall – Cloud Shape Classifier. Image projection and interactive software.
Janine Randerson – Remote senses; storms nearby. Video projections.
Natalie Robertson – Uncle Tasman - The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth. Three channel DVD video.
The relationship between the landscape and the artistic image is a central figure in New Zealand art history. However, artistic interpretations are not merely the products of a "purely artistic" sensibility or mystical creativity, in the way they are often imagined. Artists have always relied on the work of scientists who systematically document environmental phenomena, and this is especially the case for artists of the modernist period. For example, New Zealand's most famous painter, Colin McCahon, relied heavily on the writings and sketches of geologist Sir Charles Cotton to understand some of the structural features of the land that would be emphasised in his strikingly spare compositions of the North Otago landscape.
However, less well documented is the influence of visual artists upon the visualisation practices of scientists. Science is, after all, full of wonder and creative discovery, as the popular science magazines show us. However, because scientific data is supposed to be objective, any hint of non-objective influence must be disavowed, even though the very act of perceiving data is through metaphor and visualisation. Science studies scholar Sharon Traweek calls this kind of scientific culture "an extreme culture of objectivity; a culture of no culture, which longs passionately for a world without loose ends, without temperament, gender, nationalism, or other sources of disorder – for a world outside human space and time." Yet as Donna Haraway observes, "What too many map-makers [and scientists] forget is that spatialization is a social practice, and there are several ways to spatialize. [...] Local knowledge and systematicity are not opposed, but the kinds of systematicity and the kinds of tropes are very much at stake." In other words, as much as there is a scientific basis to aspects of artistic practices; there is also a social and aesthetic dimension to science.
Artists have an important contribution to make to scientific practices, as they sensitise us to the human meaning of certain kinds of data, as well as considering new ways to go about its measurement. The three artists in this exhibition all come from New Zealand, a land renowned for the beauty of its natural environment. However, all raise the question of other ways of imagining the land, and all three works use digital media to develop diverse observational methodologies. In effect, they provide us with geographic information systems that allow the viewer an alternative spatialization of land data (geomatics), and to imagine new ways of inhabiting the natural environment, what we might call an "ecomatics".
Janine Randerson's work Remote senses; storms nearby cuts across the disciplinary boundaries that divide the macro and micro visualisations in meteorological data. The images combine stills from both New Zealand satallite image databases with television footage of extreme weather. As well as large weather events, Remote senses also records surface 'eddies', small divergences in flow that cause a current to double back on itself, in water or air. The experience brings to mind the meteorological folk wisdom that the air moving from a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world - radically shifting our scale of visualisation in this way stimulates the imagination and makes us more sensitive to our actions and movements - causing us to reflect on our own role in environmental change.
For communities who have lived in a single place for a long time, changes in the weather can indicate larger trends - a certain wind pattern for one or two days may signal a wet winter, or an early spring may even give rise to speculation on global warning. Randerson's practice often plays on the effect that using sophisticated instruments to augment the senses might have on perception. For this Shanghai installation, Randerson also uses images collected from the Feng Yun (wind and cloud satellites) over China. The different data visualisation techniques for Chinese and American satellites reflect the different ownership and control of meteorological images transmitted from space. Once again, our understanding of the natural world is shown to have social and political underpinnings.
Janine Randerson – Remote senses; storms nearby.
Douglas Bagnall's interactive work Cloud Shape Classifier asks the question as to whether one of our most sublime "natural" experiences, the aesthetic appreciation of clouds, can be systematised and automated. The Cloud Shape Classifier consists of a computer and digital camera, which is tilted skyward in Wellington, New Zealand. Every few seconds, an image of the sky is captured; analysed and classified according to shape, texture, and colour; and saved to disk.
The images are uploaded to a website and projected in the gallery via a computer with a broadband connection. Visitors to the exhibition see a selection of four cloud pictures in a grid format – by pressing one of the buttons accompanying each of the images, they tell the computer that they prefer that picture. The computer learns from the button presses, and tries to show clouds that it thinks people will like in that location. By visiting the website, people can train the machine to choose clouds specifically for them, or participate in the creation of a public selection.
The Cloud Shape Classifier perhaps contains a critique of our focus on aesthetic products, over the process of looking at the natural environment. Bagnall's commentary on the project website sardonically suggests that, "many people would like to see interesting clouds, but lack the spare time in which to look upwards."
Douglas Bagnall – Cloud Shape Classifier.
While New Zealand is known for its clean and green image, Natalie Robertson presents a different view in Uncle Tasman: The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth. In this work, two perspectives on land use are contrasted. The perspective of indigenous Māori who seek to maintain the land represents a radically different view from the government and industry who have treated the location as a toxic waste dump. Robertson plays the role of reflexive investigator, rediscovering alternative stories from her place of birth (Kawerau) that were suppressed during her upbringing.
In the indigenous cultures of the Pacific, storytelling is one of the most important ways that knowledge is maintained and shared. This usually involves a complex blend of literal action and metaphorical or implied meanings. The three video channels in Uncle Tasman tell three stories, but in two different ways.
The most ancient is the traditional story of the epic love triangle between the three mountains in the region, Pūtauaki (adjacent to Kawerau), Tarawera (home of a well known series of waterfalls), and Whakaari (an active island volcano in the Bay of Plenty). Pūtauaki attempted to leave his unhappy marriage with Tarawera to be with the beautiful Whakaari, but while moving through the night was caught at sunrise between them, and frozen into his present position at Kawerau. Tarawera's tears for her departed husband create the Tarawera Falls.
This sad story is given an additional layer of pathos by contrasting this cosmological story of the local Maori inhabitants with the contemporary story of toxic waste and environmental destruction in Kawerau. This story that contests the contemporary myth of a "clean, green New Zealand" that is fostered by the tourist industry, and the sounds express grief and anger over the loss of human lives that may not have occurred had the mill not been established.
The sound in Uncle Tasman begins with a call, A ra ra, signalling the commencement of the well-known Ngati Porou women's haka Ka panapana. Ngāti Porou are Robertson's iwi (tribal group) from the east coast of New Zealand, the haka is a group dance with shouted accompaniment, often used in formal welcome or challenge. Haka such as Ka panapana have traditionally provided Ngāti Porou women with a means of articulating their social and political concerns. Although the artist does not belong to the local iwi (tribe) of Kawerau, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, the haka provides the artist with a platform to speak her concerns about her birthplace, voicing a call for social and environmental justice for all peoples and lands.
As a bicultural nation of both indigenous and settler peoples in the wake of colonisation, New Zealand constantly negotiates competing world-views and different perspectives on life and the land.
Natalie Robertson – Uncle Tasman - The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth.
All the artists in Ecomatics and Geomatics: Three Stories seem to reflect something of this complex reality. The scientific paradigm tells its own stories, which have great explanatory power and allow us to enjoy technological and economic advances. However, there are other stories that we can tell and hear about the land and how we inhabit it, which are no less significant. The artists in this exhibition highlight the multi-layered complexity of our individual responses to scientific data, whether we are engaged in scientific or artistic research.
– Danny Butt
Note: High-resolution images available on request.
Danny Butt acknowledges the generous support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation (Asia:NZ) in assisting travel to Shanghai.
Janine Randerson's Remote senses; storms nearby was made possible with generous funding support from Unitec, Auckland and the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Other contributors to Remote senses; storms nearby include Jason Johnston Audio Composition; Tim Natusch, AUT, NOAA-17 Satellite audio data; Landcare ResearchNZ, Satellite Image Data; China Meteorological Administration, Beijing Climate Centre, Satellite image data; Susanne Rutledge and David Campbell, University of Waikato, Audio data from Torehape weather station; and Television One Network News, Television New Zealand, news footage.
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