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Brydee Rood (Auckland New Zealand)

brydee_weka@hotmail.com

http://brydeerood.blogspot.com/

ABSTRACT:

Floating with a composition of survival blanket pieces on the Whanganui River, I became a caretaker and guardian of the river, seeking balance within a fragile relationship between man and river, the precarious materiality of the pieces an ever-shifting dialogue. Survival River Series speaks to the state of emergency faced by many rivers across the world and our complex role as poisoners and potential saviours.

There is something fascinating that exists between ritual and habit; of the things we do habitually versus an act of ritual, it murky and vague sometimes, maybe some old habits become rituals and some old rituals become habits – the conscious, unconscious, practiced and learnt knowledge that inherently develops our mentality and belief structure and the age old questioning of why we do the things we do? Man’s contemporary relationship with water is questionable, underscored by geopolitics; viewed as a resource to be used, polluted, wasted and consumed at a price albeit economic, social and environmental. The work seeks to quiet the imposed value of water within a capitalist structure, to evoke an alternative value and express a reverent positive memory exchange with the body of water existing within us and connecting us to the earths Rivers.

DESCRIPTION:

As an installed AV work, involving video installation/projection of the Survival River Series, Gold Waters Whanganui 2016 and photographic documentation from Survival River Series, River Flag 2015.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Brydee Rood b.1978

Fulbright Scholar 2012

Growing up in Auckland, New Zealand in the 80’s with flashy material values mingling with the cobbled together treehut and patch of native bush at the bottom of the road, spurred a vibrant curiosity for the world around me and an insatiable DIY instinct cross-pollinated with a reverent respect for nature. In 2007 I graduated with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland where I focussed on environmental installation. I have lived and worked in New Zealand, Germany, India, Indonesia, USA, Japan, Mexico and The Netherlands; these places and their inherent attitudes and patterns of consumption have greatly influenced my visual practice evidenced by successive site-responsive projects including Survival River Series and The Rainmaker, navigating 3 successive, sodden Monsoon seasons, questioning our human relationship with water, waste, weather and posing alternative values in a changing environment. In my early career, my work has been selected for exhibition across an international spectrum framed in environments ranging from urban canals and coastal national parks to dessert villages; to the exterior of a working rubbish truck; to an artist booth at PULSE Contemporary Art Fair; into the underbellies and back street alleys of Wellington, New York, Melbourne and Berlin.

Robert Mackay (University of Hull, UK), Jessica Rodriguez (Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico), Rolando Rodriguez (Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico) / 

r.a.mackay@hull.ac.uk 

http://robmackay.net

jac307@gmail.com

ABSTRACT:

Flight of the Monarchs is a multi-­‐screen audiovisual installation. It is inspired by the incredible 3,000 mile journey that the Monarch butterfly takes each year from Canada to Mexico, finding warmer climes during the winter in order to roost. There have been several theories as to how these tiny creatures navigate, including magnetism and celestial mapping. The most recent research shows that they have an in-­‐built sun compass and chronometer which allows them to migrate in swarms of millions. Amazingly, they fly to the same roosts each year, often to the exact same trees. Their children make the journey back north in the spring, and their great-­‐grandchildren return to Mexico the following year. In Mexican tradition, there is a belief that the butterflies are the souls of the dead, returning to visit each year.

DESCRIPTION:

Flight of the Monarchs is and immersive audiovisual installation inspired by the 3,000 mile journey that the Monarch butterfly takes each year from Canada to Mexico, finding warmer climes during the winter in order to roost. There have been several theories as to how these tiny creatures navigate, including magnetism and celestial mapping. The most recent research shows that they have an in-­‐built sun compass and chronometer which allows them to migrate in swarms of millions. They fly to the same roosts each year, often to the exact same trees. Their children make the journey back north in the spring, and their great-­‐grandchildren return to Mexico the following year. In Mexican tradition, there is a belief that the butterflies are the souls of the dead, returning to visit each year.

In recent years, the Monarchs’ numbers have declined steeply. Several factors may be causing this: logging of their roosting grounds, crop spraying, and climate change.

The installation is set up to resemble a hide in the forest from which the viewer can look out at these beautiful

creatures. It is comprised of four video screens (front, left, right, and top panels) and a 4 channel quad speaker array. These are embedded in a wooden structure evoking a hide.

Video and sound footage of the butterflies was recorded at the El Rosario reserve in Michoacan in 2015, trying to capture the beauty of these delicate butterflies and their surroundings. The sound for the installation is comprised of three elements: Field recordings which capture the rushing sound of millions of tiny wings; a specially commissioned poem (La Marcha de las Mariposas); and a recording of an improvisation session which we conducted in the open air in Michaocan on the same day as the recording of the butterflies.

The elements combine to give the participant a transcendent experience in an attempt to connect them with the butterflies and evoke a sense of place. The three layers to the installation each give a different focus on the same phenomenon.

Credits:

• Rob Mackay: Concept design, video recording, sound recording, flute, composition and mixing.
• Rolando Rodriguez: Poetry and voice.
• Jessica Rodriguez: Video editing.
• Alex Brook: Set design and construction.
• Manuel Zirate: Video recording
• David Blink: Hang.
• John Sanders: Accordion.

Supported by: The University of Hull, CMMAS (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonores).

Thanks also to: Rodrigo Sigal, Alastair Borthwick, Pavel Drabek, Tariq Emam, Chris Jones, Alan Young, Matt Barnard, Steve Camm, Andy Hastings, Neill Warhurst, Tim Skelly, and Rick Welton.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIE(S):

Robert Mackay is a composer and sound artist. Currently he is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, UK. Recent projects have moved towards a more cross-­‐disciplinary approach, including theatre, acoustic ecology, text in performance, audiovisual installation work, and human-­‐computer interaction. Prizes and honours include: IMEB Bourges (1997 and 2001); EAR99 from Hungarian Radio (1999); Confluencias (2003); Concours ‘Luc Ferrari’ from La Muse en Circuit (2006). robmackay.net

Jessica Rodríguez /mx Mexican. She is currently studying a Master in Arts and researching about algorithmic composition in México. Her work focus in video with an extended cv on working with composers.

Rolando Rodriguez /mx __Master in Contermporary Art. He has focus his work in the link between sound-­‐text-­‐image, working on performances and research projects about Expanded Literature, LiveCinema, Digital Literature and others.

Roslyn Taplin (Adjunct Professor, University of New South Wales Art & Design, Sydney, Australia)

r.taplin@unsw.edu.au

https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-roslyn-taplin

ABSTRACT:

Anthropocene River, a short digital video created by Roslyn Taplin, is a response to the impacts of the Anthropocene, including climate change on the landscape of Scotland’s post-industrial Abhainn Chluaidh, or River Clyde. Taplin explores human nature entanglements through the lenses of the riverscape, science and history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Roslyn Taplin is an environmental artist and scientist who works at both St Peters, Sydney, Australia and Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Scotland. Her creative outputs include drawing, digital photography, video and installation. In many of her works, she explores the use of glyph or textual information in speeches and documents about the environment and climate change. Her qualifications include both a PhD focusing on the use of science in environmental policymaking and a Doctor of Visual Art (Queensland College of Art).

She is a Visiting Scholar at University of Strathclyde and an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Art at University of New South Wales (UNSW) Art & Design where she previously undertook Master’s studies. Ros’s art research focus is on environment, sustainability and climate change. This flows from her longerterm environmental research career. She has held academic positions at UNSW Sydney, Bond University and Macquarie University, Australia.

Ian Clothier (Intercreate/Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand)

ian.clothier@intercreate.org

http://www.intercreate.org/

Projcect Website: http://ianclothier.com/arp/

Arboretum: Rhizomatic Polynesia

Being aware of our local and global sense of place is necessary to driving forward solutions to climate change. This art work examines issues around a changing sense of place for plants, in the context of an integrated systems view.

According to the Plymouth City Council (which has incorporated the following into planning), by 2055 sea levels will have risen by 8mm, rainfall increased by 10%, river flow by 20% and wave heights by 5%. These changes to sea and storm events, will be accompanied by an increase of 2.7 degrees in summer temperatures, a 2.1 degree increase in winter temperatures and a 17% change in winter rainfall. That is a lot of excess river flow and winter rainfall being planned for. The consequences for local plants is not straightforward, as the unpredictability of natural systems comes into play. Dynamics in the real world do not follow simple rules of logic and determinism.

“Like animals, plants require specific environmental conditions—such as the right temperature, moisture, and light levels—in order to thrive. Even small changes in environmental parameters can affect the reproduction and survival of a species. As global temperatures rise, both animal and plant populations are projected to gradually shift toward northern latitudes and upward to higher elevations where temperatures are cooler in order to stay within their ideal range of environmental conditions.”

Science Magazine

Alas such a simple scheme is not the case.

“The results of the analysis were unexpected. More than 60% of plants shifted their distributions downward, toward warmer, lower elevations—despite significant climate warming across the regions under study, the team reported online on 24 July in Global Change Biology. Even more striking, all plants within a region—regardless of species—moved in the same direction.

“Initially, we thought there was something wrong with our analysis—species distributions are expected to shift upward, not downward,” says team leader and plant ecologist Melanie Harsch. “But we redid the analysis and we got the same results.”

A closer look revealed that the downhill movement of plants was likely driven by the changes in precipitation that accompanied warming temperatures. Those regions that experienced less rain and snow at high elevations were those with plants shifting toward lower elevations with wetter climates. “Less snow in winter translates into less water in summer, resulting in water-stressed plants and downward shifts,” Harsch says.

Although plant populations are shifting downward toward greater water availability, they will also have to contend with an increasingly warming climate. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Harsch states, “as temperatures rise, water needs will also increase.”

Science Magazine

There is a complexity in the impact of climate change on species, related to environmental specificity and localised conditions. In addition:

“… the timing of flowering in plants and breeding in birds – are generally more sensitive to temperature change, than to changes in rain and snowfall… According to the findings, published in journal Nature, plants and animals respond differently to temperature changes at different times of year and seasonal relationships between predators – such as insect-eating birds and plankton-eating fish – and their prey could be disrupted in the future.”

Plymouth Herald.

As with natural systems in an integrated condition, predictability is compromised as a function of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, feedback and time. Arboretum: Rhizomatic Polynesia recognises integrated systems as important to the environment and the human conception of nature. The rhizome of Deleuze and Guattari, integrated systems within business and science, and connection in Polynesian philosophy all share a fundamental premise: reality as an interconnected heterogenic multiplicity.

An arboretum is a collection of trees, and can be used to refer to shrubs and vines. This arboretum is a collection of symbolic reference points, with interrelated components.

An extrapolation of symbols references integrated systems. A relatively rare craft, the pink fluoro va’a or waka, is a Tahitian catamaran design with distinctive sails, capable of traveling great distances with stores, one means by which plants have moved as a rsult of human action, in this case up to 3000 years ago. Here ther eisa personal integration as a significant line of my genealogy traces back to Tahiti.

The long branching black vinyl is based on a traced photograph of a dessicated Yucca flower, a plant which is native to arid regions but now thrives in the high rainfall climate of Nga Motu New Plymouth where I live. The Yucca may well be the plant of the future given it’s high capacity to adapt to changing climate.

Frost will kill the bisexual fruit salad plant, and over the thirteen years since moving to the place I live now, frosts no longer occur in winter. When we first moved here, every winter there would be a light dusting of frost at one corner of the house. Today, no more.

Like a yin and yang of climate change, the black form is algae above and coral below. Corals are bleaching in the Southern Hemisphere and algae is blooming in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mechanistic modernity in a network environment is referenced in the functioning QR code, the decoded identity signal of which is this page.

Such is the rhetoric of climate change, a heterogenic multiplicity in an integrated system composed of data, DNA, plant adaptation, climate, frost, bisexual flowering plants, living organisms and the network, connected ultimately to the individual in unique ways.

As well as highlighting the issues above, the process of realising the artwork was drastically altered in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the project. It is customary in the arts, to ship art works in custom made containers to their sites of exhibition and then return freight them afterward. This would be equivalent to a trip around the world, at a carbon cost of 2.85 tonnes of CO2.

Consequently working with director Mike Phillips and local collaborator Stavros Didaki,s digital files were sent so that the art work components could be sourced and cut locally. This involved reworking the visual expression of the art work. But this kind of approach is needed in the face of climate change. Had I also travelled to the symposium, the carbon footprint of the project would have doubled. The approach taken to balance-Unbalance at Plymouth in 2017, therefore has taken 5.7 tonnes of CO2 from the carbon cost of participation. Of course, we can’t all do this all the time but most of us should some of the time. It takes open minds in the organisational structure to achieve, and I’m really thankful to Mike, Stavros, the Eden Project, Ricardo dal Farra and Birgitte Aga for supporting this approach.

Images above are on the digital files sent to Balance-Unbalance 2017. Below is the work in process in the studio as originally visualised.

Incorporated into this small scale integrated system was a feather from the Piwakawaka or fantail, native to Aotearoa New Zealand.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Ian M Clothier is an artist and collaborator, curator, Research Director at Intercreate Research Centre; Senior Academic at Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki; co-founding Director of SCANZ (Solar Circuit Aotearoa New Zealand) with Trudy Lane, Adam Hyde and Nina Czegledy; and past board member of ISEA International.

A hybrid Polynesian, his DNA traces through Te Wai Pounamu (South Island, Aotearoa New Zealand), Norfolk Island, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti and Polynesian culture to Lapita; while other lines trace back through the Isle of Man, England, the Shetland Islands and Nordic countries.

His career extends to eighty five exhibitions in fourteen countries, along with twenty four publication credits. Recent curatorial projects include Water, Peace, Power 2016; Sharing the Waiwhakaiho (2015); SCANZ2015: water*peace; Media Art Projects 2014, and 3rd nature at Puke Ariki in 2013.

Since 2009 his projects have been selected for exhibitions including Diffrazione Festival Florence 2016, Balance-Unbalance 2016 Manizales, Festival of Lights New Plymouth 2016, A delicate balance: rongo taketake a taane Auckland 2015, Pacific Shortcuts Croatia 2014, Balance-Unbalance 2013 Noosa, Machine Wilderness ISEA 2012 Albuquerque, Uncontainable ISEA 2011 Istanbul Exhibition, Cultura Digital Rio de Janeiro, What if at Puke Ariki Museum New Zealand 2010 and ISEA 2009 Belfast Exhibition.