April-December 2011
Gauge is an investigation by a group of artists and scientists into weather and scale. Gauge Program Notes
The team is: Graeme Leak, performer/composer/inventor; Rosemary Joy, miniature percussion designer; Cam Robbins, visual artist, sculptor; Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, music/sound; Dr Michael Roderick, meterologist and author of Atlas of the Global Water Cycle, ANU; Dr Adrian Pearce, systems engineer and computer scientist, University of Melbourne.
This research/development period in the Gauge process considers the effect of climate change on rainfall, with artists responding to the Atlas of the Global Water Cycle. The Atlas, and the Gauge project explores both the historic records of the past 100 years and the future global rainfall projections for the next 100 years over the seven continents of the earth. The investigation is expressed through the disparate processes of five artists working in contrasting ways across the disciplines of sculpture, music and new media. Gauge is informed by and with scientists working in areas of hydrology and complex systems.
The artists inhabit an area of practice that considers elemental data- virtual/live- within installation. The interdisciplinary approach rests on the evolution of a varied set of responses to complex rainfall data, which synthesises data on the past, present and future rainfall patterns across the world. The particular inter-disciplinary focus of this collection of artists considers the exploration of interactivity within a process of responding to and forming interpretations of, rainfall patterns.
The interactivity between varying individual processes in different mediums provides a multifaceted view of the same originating data. The intention in this process is to represent the balance of individual versus collective articulation, and to express the inherent complexity of natural systems through a dynamic interaction. The expression/interpretation of the data will evolve through concurrent individual processes, comparing and integrating these within the large space at the Meat Market and over an extended period of time, during which the artists will benefit from information/interventions provided by the author of the ANU Atlas, Dr Michael Roderick, as well as software engineer and expert in the interrogation of very complex datasets, Dr Adrian Pearce. The resultant work will benefit from a sustained period of engagement – individual process integrating across discipline – each individual outcome absorbing nuance and literal transformations of data to create an inter-dependence and layered complexity within a unified experience. In our experience, time is a crucial part of collaborating with scientists. Focused bursts of obsessed discussion work best. The integration of the research of Adrian and Michael, and their process, will be part of the final work, contributing research that covers the microscopic behaviour of water droplets through to global rainfall patterns.
Gauge will have a series of iterations, beginning with the development of a composite of work by five Australian artists, and evolving to include responses from artists from seven continents, reflecting the global water cycle. For this first creative development, the Australian continent will be considered, with a strategy for commissioning the remainder of clusterings from international artists from around the world.
First stage of the project will involve:
1.Investigative discussion with Global Rainfall Atlas team in Canberra:research seminar for artists and group attendance at an artwork. Reading lists from/for all. In Melbourne, discussion and expert advice from Dr Adrian Pearce on the optimal interpretation of complex datasets will inform how data will be incorporated and flow between respective interpretations.
2.The pilot implementation of software and sounding mechanisms (instruments) to attribute data from the Global Atlas project and/or similar or emergent outcomes. For example, MF/TH are interested to direct data to drive resonating bodies, or to regulate water dripping onto a discarded piano.
3.Discussion and development of the working process which includes considering the framework for the interactive process between all and articulating responses to the rainfall data. This will occur through Friday morning weather/coffee meetings between artists and scientists as available.
4.Discussion related to the ongoing and international nature of the project, including the commissioning/recruitment of international artists.
5.Construction of prototype of installation. Artists will work in their studio spaces, and in the common space at the Meat Market, bringing their components together at various stages of the development to articulate the combined “orchestration” of the work.
6 Final two week intensive at ArtsHouse with showing and roundtable artist-scientist discussion.
Why?
The overwhelming quantity and variety of data related to climate change has led to a difficulty in representing and reflecting the issue in broader cultural terms. This particular group of artists and scientists are already working with ideas of scale and practicalities and suppostions concerning weather and are in unique positions to create work. This project continues our investigations into arts-science.
Placement of work aesthetically/internationally
The investigation of natural and elemental forces, including the weather, is a widespread and increasingly topical area of artistic practice. Approaches have ranged from the placement of material objects in landscape and highlighting temporary and permanent transformation, to the widespread representation of data (encapsulated in the phrase the database aesthetic). While the collected artists have tackled both these extremes, the articulation of a systems approach in a joint artistic process itself perhaps sits more closely with more collaborative performance or cinematic forms that require complex divisions of labour to distil a singular product such as a piece of theatre or film.
A similar process is reflected in the examples of jointly realised sound works that were a feature when the possibility for both serial and simultaneous transmission of musical materials arose about ten years ago on the internet.
The idea of data flows around and to and from the individual and joint practices of the artists we feel is a significant inter-disciplinary innovation within the area of installation. Particularly, the idea that a “solution” to the complexity of phenomena such as changing rainfall patterns can only arise when collections of discrete entities (artists, nations, companies) contribute a multi-faceted, yet co-ordinated and integrated representation. It’s an old, perhaps unfashionable, idea to model “unity of purpose”, yet through the workings of an artistic process the idea of unity becomes invigorated as dynamic, responsive and worked.
Gauge is modelling a collective response across art-forms and disciplines that promises both great beauty and poignancy. It specifically engages with one of the critical cultural and political issues for our time, linking directly with cogent data/ predictions relating to rainfall.