Antarctic Studies

Introduction

August 2006 Meltlake: No head for it, Oil painted and incised Fibreglass dress dummy

February 9, 2007

Extending 'The Landsman's View' of Antarctica

Abstract for arts-based research for PhD

College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales

The aim of my research is to find out what a contemporary wintering Antarctic base community is looking at. What lenses are the scientists and support personnel looking through, and how accurately can I visually represent their perceptions of the landscape? My hypothesis is that a multiplicity of landscape views will be revealed, with layers of meaning based on scientific inquiry, technical knowledge and physical and psychological endurance. I also anticipate observing responses to the environment which express both seriousness and humour.

My methodology will be to analyse journals, arts, artifacts, social rituals, scientific visualisations and publications of contemporary Antarctic expeditioners who have observed and experienced Antarctic regions. On-line correspondences with expeditioners will be developed from those begun since my first voyage (V7 2002, Davis-Mawson). An extended field trip is proposed for Davis base in 2007-2008, to participate more fully in base life and to engage more actively with an Antarctic community in its landscape (pending acceptance by the Australian Antarctic Division ). I will write, draw and animate my understanding of what is being observed and responded to, and in what ways these are expressed. I will elicit responses from expeditioners to my images and notes for correction, comment and further dialogue.

A website will be designed with an interface to integrate drawings and animations, as they are developed, within The Antarctic Dictionary (Hince, 2000). This work will build upon a previous experiment in integrating an artwork with an electronic reference work, Roget's Circular and Macquarie Thesaurus (Pub. Macmillan Education, 2002). Also presaging the present research is the interactive animated CDROM, A Little Skiting on the Side (2000), made as an 'Identity Distinct' project for the Flinders Island community in Tasmania Australia and funded by the Australian Council of the arts. This work was based on the perceptions of Flinders Islanders of their physical and cultural environment. These works will be reviewed for what I have learned from their successes and challenges, and how they inform my present direction.

Previous research into the images of Antarctica has mainly focused on the two dimensional work of professional artists who have accompanied scientific expeditions, such as the recently completed thesis by Lynne Andrews (University of Tasmania, 2005). My work will explore, discover and expose something of the visual culture which develops from within the Antarctic community itself, complimenting contemporary research into its literary culture (Leane, 2002). I will also extend an understanding of 'The Landsman's View' (Simpson-Housley, 1992), to include the women and men of today who work for substantial durations of time on the Antarctic Continent.

Past and present artist/scholars whose practices inspire and shape my own include: Edward Wilson, polar medical doctor/artist with Scott's last expedition, whose plein air drawings share his moments on the ice with such accuracy and economy of means (line, tone, colour and annotation); Edward Tuffte, cognitive artist/writer, who investigates the clarity of information communication; Tim Webb, animator/teacher, whose film, A is for Autism portrays the experience of a group of autistic people to their environment, re-presenting their drawings and words as 'visual listening'; John Hughes, artist/animator/puppeteer, whose personal response to the landscape integrates the physical, spiritual and psychological into the realms of traditional and digital media; and Fischli and Weiss, collaborating multimedia artists, whose celebrations of the mundane take whatever artform is appropriate to their ideas, often using the materials of industrial waste. Their humour would be familiar to many an Antarctican, in their astonished views of humans in the landscape, portrayed through the eyes of their personas, Rat and Bear.

Acknowledgement of the origins of my own perception, and the impact of these on the cognitive and aesthetic outcomes of this work, will be made. As Simpson-Housely wrote (1992), 'perception is a learned process, and not simply a response to a stimulus'. Ways of knowing the environments we occupy, and the lenses we use to perceive them are many-layered and coloured by what we learn.

Roberts, 2007, 'Extending 'The Landsman's View' of Antarctica', abstract published in the Book of Abstracts, p 31-2, Second International Conference, Art in Early Childhood, University of New England, Australia, 5-9 February 2007:

http://www.artlearn.net/artEC/program/Abstract%20file%20FINAL.pdf