The final session for the day returned us to the tactics of perception.
Alistair Regan from Design at Otago Polytechnic presented some of his early works conducted in Sweden where the control rooms of large industrial environments were revisited in order to make them more sensory. Alistair focused on the multiple inputs that a person employs as they recieve, process, and react to information. The experience highlighted the role of the peripheral in understanding. The sonic environment of an industrial workplace was found to be as important as the data filled screen. Important in Alistair's work is a shifting of the notion of feedback from a one-to-one correspondence. Through the design process feedback was found to be multi-sensory and locative.
Pete Gorman from the Dunedin School of Art presented some of his early research into the sonification of geological matter. Begining with the pseudo-scientific discovery that he could insert two metal rods into the ground and locate the hum of electrical mains, Pete is now working towards the sonification of rocks through a kind of activiation of their 'voice'. This is not about anthropomorphising the rocks though, Pete is searching for a way to engage the tacet knowledge of an form of engaged ecology.
Medical Practicioner Paul Trotman presented some clips from his TV film "donated to science" that explores the kinds of boundaries that may or may not be crossed when engaging with death. The film follows two people who have donated their body to science, firstly by interviewing them about their decision, and them by interviewing medical students who are engaging in two years of dissection. The film ends with the students viewing the initial interviews. This is a deeply complex film and the differeing emotions are clear in the shifting perceptions of the medical students. The film will screen on TV later this month. http://www.realscreen.com/screeningroom/20090930/donated2science.html
Karsten Schneider from Natural History New Zealand is also working amidst the rules and constructions of television production. Karsten told a story of his own realisation that television was a productive and compelling medium for expression in its own right. Working with zoological studies in eco-location Karsten then developed a practice in 3D animation that pushes at the boundaries of what exactly natural history can be. He showed extracts from Dark Days in Monkey City http://animal.discovery.com/tv/dark-days-monkey-city/ a series that shifts our understandings of both documentary and representation by employing strong fictional elements to attempt to tell a 'true' story.
Mark McGuire from Design Studies at the University of Otago introduced three projects that engage the politics of visuality. Core to these works is the information that visual things can give us that is just not possible by any other means. Nele Azevedo's Melting Man project is an eloquent installation that does not *tell* us about climate change but shows it through ice and heat. Similarly Eve Mosher's High Waterline Project invoves a simple line, a marker that cuts through communities and records wet and dry. Mark highlighted that these works are not illustration, but actually events that trip associations, works that make us think by thinking themselves.
The final plenary wass chaired by Marcus Turner from Natural History New Zealand. David and I had asked Marcus to try to track the day and draw from it a series of threads. Marcus talked us through all the presentations pulling out the core idea about method and experimentation: that a testtube does not equate with scence. This was an important reminder of the sometimes too easy conflation of technology with science, and a need for clarity and specifity with not only our tools but also with the way we discuss them.
Leoni Schmidt the Head of the Dunedin School of Art closed the conference by reintroducing the notion of eco-location as a method for connectivity. By sending messages out into space networks can be bought into being, and interactions can occur.
