merging worlds: art and science in practice · cleveland volcano. using cartographic software to...
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Merging Worlds: Art and Science in Practice
Daniel Beech GIS Visual Construction with Environment Systems
Supporting Text and Objects
VOLCANIC STONES
The stones on display are collected from the Tongariro national park in New Zealand
where three volcanoes - Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngaurahoe - are located in close
proximity. The stones are produced through geological processes resulting from active
and recurrent volcanism, such processes are determined by metamorphosis and plate
tectonics. The convergence of the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates produce volcanic
phenomena that create such materials, which become geological artefacts studied by the
physical sciences. However, these stones are also of social significance to the local Maori
whose tribal land is located within this volcanic landscape. Volcanic stones, such as these,
have become synonymous with North Island Maori culture, as they represent the earth
upon which the local Maori tribes worship. The stones, volcanic debris and pumice that
litter the landscape have become a form of cultural symbolism for the Maori.
VOLCANIC GIFT AND LEAFLET PROMOTION
On display is visitor certificate that I received as a reward and memory for venturing into
the volcanic craters of New Zealand’s North Island. Such tourist memorabilia place
emphasis on the experience of encountering volcanic landscapes. Yet while the
certificate provides an example of how volcanic landscapes are promoted to tourists,
such memorabilia pay little attention to the physical processes and dynamics of volcanic
landscapes and their geological instability.
VOLCANIC TOURISM
The unique landscapes created by volcanoes have become sites of adventure tourism as
people travel to both active and extinct craters to sightsee, hike, climb, camp,
mountaineer or take hot air balloon trip. The volcano Cappadocia, in Turkey, provides
an example of this form of tourism. Advertising Cappadocia as a ‘spectacular landscape
from the pages of science fiction’, tourist operator Argeus: Tourism and Travel provides a
number of transport options that range from car to hot air balloon, demonstrating that
accessing volcanic landscapes is not an experience limited geologists and volcanologists
Images and Supporting Text
Volcano tourists arrive by the busloads at the rim of Nisyros volcano in Greece, before hiking down into the crater itself. This hike entails an element of risk as the only guardrails to prevent tourists from falling are found around the craters rim, while the track that leads into the crater itself offers no such support.
The cinder cone of Eldfell, a composite volcanic cone located on the Icelandic Island of Heimaey, attracts tourists eager to climb the 200 meter the slope created by an eruption 1973.
VOLCANO MODEL
The model portrays digital visualisations of the Cleveland Volcanic landscape. Drawing
inspiration from ‘The Other Volcano’, an instillation by artist Nelly Ben Hayoun, this
project re-works two-dimensional cartographic information back into a three-
dimensional form, with the aim of invoking different interpretations of the Cleveland
landscape. Using detailed imagery the work draws attention to the cultural and scientific
dynamics that exist between various social actors who live and work in and around the
Cleveland volcano. Using cartographic software to explore the physicality and materiality
of this volcanic site, as well as the cultural and social dynamics that are woven through
the landscape, enables an excavation of art/humanities and science entanglement of
Cleveland. Using visualisation technology in this way, the work suggests the import of
such technology in the consideration of geopolitics, for Cleveland, this played a vital role
in the events of the Cold War. This project then, offers a space for thought. How
might visualisation technology add to retrospective studies of geopolitics? And, in its
interactive capacity, which draws on audience participation in the form of a survey, the
work also questions the response of different demographics to visualisation software?
THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE MODEL
The model depicts and reconstructs an intensely physical volcanic landscape. The
Cleveland landscape is demarcated by the geological phenomena of a symmetrical
volcanic cone created by geologic and tectonic processes. The model accounts for the
various ways through which, the physical dynamics of this landscape can be re-presented,
remodelled and reconfigured, accounting for landscape evolution, change and
remediation. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology and associated
software have been widely used within this project as a means of accessing this landscape
at a distance. Such applications are based fundamentally upon scientific and numerical
methods of producing digital cartography. The resulting representations enrich the
scientific foundations so that social and cultural characteristics can be accommodated.
The visualisations reconstruct the current features, environments and surroundings in
which the Cleveland volcano is located; distorting and manipulating reality by using
zoom, panoramic applications as well as ‘affectual’ tools that exaggerate the atmospheric
and climatic elements of the visualisation.
Delyth Robinson
Botanical Art with the National Botanic Garden of Wales
Supporting Text and Objects
INTERPRETING BARCODE WALES
Having conducted a work placement at the National Botanical Garden of Wales I have developed my own interpretation of the Barcode Wales project. The work presented here draws on the tradition of Botanical Art, a mode of scientific study still deployed today as a means to create detailed images that mimic the appearance, form and colour of plants. In contemporary art, this unique style has been adapted and new, innovative forms of Botanical Arts have emerged. Drawing on this tradjectory I have developed my own, personal response to this art form, which consists of bold colours and shapes that highlight the individual characteristics of the plants studied. The style I have used considers contemporary advances in the scientific, botanic study of plants where focus has shifted from consideration of the whole, to constituent parts. These advances raise a series of questions such as how we might visualise that which we cannot see: plant identity at the micro level? How can we imagine biological specimens as classification systems shift to focus on DNA following the global techno-scientific project, the Barcoding of Life Initiative (BOLI)? And how might such imaginations invoke curiosity into this scientific process?
SPREADING BELLFLOWER
These three images all represent the Spreading Bellflower (Campanula patula), which has
recently been Barcoded by the National Botanical Garden of Wales. This plant in
particular is of importance as it is currently endangered in the UK and critically
endangered in Wales. Very little is known about the plant, though studies are currently
underway by members of the science team at the National Botanical Garden of Wales fill
in some of the gaps in our knowledge of this species. Each image represents different
stages of the Barcoding process, beginning with the identification of the plant within its
natural habitat. Then the plant is collected and protected within a herbarium specimen
where details such as, the person who collected the sample, as well as its location or
origin, are recorded. The final image is that of the plants unique barcode which enables
the plant to be identified from a very small fragment.
Photos of the Display
Dominic Walker
Aesthetics and Science at Hafod with Ceredigion Museum
Posters providing an overview of information on the digital display:
Supporting Image
Photographs of the Display
Elizabeth Straughan
Inverted Taxidermy with SymbioticA
Supporting Text, Objects and Images
Within Geography the spaces of the body itself have become an object of inquiry. In
my PhD I honed in on the body’s surface, the skin, in order to explore the relationship
between dead and living bodies in the practice of taxidermy. The word taxidermy is
derived from the Greek words taxis, meaning order or arrangement, and derma, translated
as skin. In more literal terms taxidermy means the arrangement of skin, or the body’s
surface layer. In order to study this practice I learnt taxidermy as a means of
understanding the fleshy materiality of dead animal bodies through a hands on approach
that focused on the role that the sense of touch plays in directing the engagement
between the dead and the living. In this research, I found that the materiality of the dead
affects the taxidermy process sin numerous ways, emotional as well as physical.
The animal that I practiced most regularly whilst learning taxidermy was the mole. The
mole on the left is one whose skin I arranged, while the mole on the right was mounted
by a professional taxidermist.
PLAYING WITH MATERIALS
At the start of my residency at SymbioticA I initially planned to create an animal-shaped
form over which I would grow human skin cells. Electing to do this with the low slung
body of the platypus, an animal shape readily available in Perth toy shops, I attempted at
first to practice carving this shape with a cuttlefish skeleton, an organic material available
at the beach. It quickly became apparent that this brittle, porous skeletal material was
going to be very difficult to work with. Firstly, I found thin sections (such as a limb,
once carved) were prone to breaking. Second, when experimenting with this material’s
potential as a scaffold over which to grow cells, I found that porous cuttlefish skeletons
tended to disintegrate when saturated with the nutrient media required too keep the cells
alive. This idea was abandoned.
VISUALISING CELLS
Another non-human, organic material I considered as a possible scaffold over which to
grow human skin was a feather. Using magpie feathers collected on my morning walk
into SymbioticA, I attempted to grow bone marrow cells that had been genetically
engineered to have a gene that produces the Green Florescent Protein (GFP). This is a
molecule found in jellyfish, which fluoresces green under ultraviolet light, enabling cells
to be seen. This protein was important here, for not only did this experiment hinge on
the capacity for cells to grow over a feather scaffold, of interest was also a question of
visualization. That is, knowledge of cell growth would be determined on their being seen
on the surface of the feather, something with which GFP would assist.
Once the feathers had been ‘seeded’ with cells and time had been given for cell growth I
practiced using the microscopic visualisation technologies and found that these cells
would indeed grow over a feather scaffold, but only to a certain extent as the cells tended
to gather at the feather tips. Some cells did appear further down the feather strands, but
as predicted by SymbioticA’s resident artist Ionat Zurr, this was hard to monitor as the
feather’s dark form under the microscope obscured the cells from view.
SACRIFICING, ETHICS AND STAINING
Towards the end of my residency at SymbioticA I started to play with the idea of
growing cells over an entire body. Inspired by specimens on display in SymbioticA’s
laboratory I aimed to dye a mouse body with Alcian blue-Alizarin red skeletal staining,
which turns bone red and cartilage blue.
This move to work with an entire dead body unveiled the ethical protocols within the
department of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology. That is, when an animal life is
to be ‘sacrificed’ an email is sent to all the department’s scientists asking if they would
like any ‘parts’ of a body for their particular research. During my residency mice were
being sacrificed for their skin, skeletal muscles and hearts. As such, once I received
mouse bodies to work with they were no long ‘whole’.
In order to do Alcian blue–Alizarin red staining a mouse body first has to be skinned and
gutted. Then the body needs to have all its cells removed in a process called
decellularisation, in order that the flesh can turn opaque. This is done by placing the
mouse body into ethanol and then leaving it on a ‘rocker’ so that the cells are massaged
out of the flesh. Then the mouse body is placed firstly in acid and Alcian blues stain, and
second, in acid with Alizarin red stain.
Photos of the Display
Event Photos
Daniel Beech with visitors
Daniel Beech with Professor John Grattan and Professor Martin Jones with Dr Natasha
De Vere from the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Delyth Robinson talks with students about her project
Delyth Robinson talks about her project with Dr Natasha De Vere from the National
Botanic Garden of Wales representative.
Sebastian Hudson and Nicki Turton from Environment Systems talk with Dr Natasha
De Vere from the National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Dominic Walker talks with Institute of Geography and Earth Science’s head of
department, Professor Mike Woods.
Dominic Walker and Dr Rhys Jones
Elizabeth Straughan discusses her project with event visitor
Event visitor meets a mole
Institute of Geography and Earth Science staff and postgraduate students, with Access
to Masters Project and Business Development Officer, Karen Hutton.
Professor Deborah Dixon holds a de-brief session with Access to Masters students
Delyth Robinson, Daniel Beech and Dominic Walker.
Attendance Registration
Visitors signing in