Presentations
SEEDING TREATY, April 2019, ANTARCTIC CONNECTIONS AT THE END OF THE WORLD CONFERENCE, USHUAIA READING MOTHER COUNTRY, November 2018, HEALING OUR SPIRIT WORLD CONFERENCE, SYDNEY LENS ON HEALTH: DATA ARENA VIRTUAL JOURNEY, October 2018, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY GUMBAYNGIRR STORY WITH GUMBAYNGIRR SCIENTIST AND ARTIST CHELS MARSHALL, May 2018, SHINE DOME, CANBERRA OCEANIC BLISS: FROM ISOLATED HEROES TO INTERDISCIPLINARY RELATIONSHIPS at INSTITUTE FOR MARINE & ANTARCTIC STUDIES, HOBART, July 2017 BEWARE OF PEDESTRIANS TELLING STORIES at UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY DATA ARENA OCEANIC BLISS at MANLY ART GALLERY & MUSEUM 2016-2017 OCEANIC BLISS at ERAMBOO ARTIST ENVIRONMENT 2016 SYDNEY INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE 2015 COMMUNICATION BY PHEREMONES: OCKHAM'S RAZOR 2015 CLIMARTE: ART OF THE ANTHROPOCENE, AUSTRALIAN GALLERIES MELBOURNE 2015 OCEANIC LIVING DATA: ALIGN 2015 LIVING DATA: EVOLVING CONVERSATIONS 2014 LIVING DATA AT BEIJING CITY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL 2014 LIVING DATA: ART FROM CLIMATE SCIENCE 2013 OCEANIC SYDNEY 2012 EORA ABORIGINAL CENTRE 2012 IV ANTARCTIC ART & CULTURE CONFERENCE/FESTIVAL BUENOS AIRES 2012 ANTARCTIC TREATY CONSULTATIVE MEETING HOBART 2012 ANIMATING CHANGE 2013 ANIMATING CHANGE 2012 KRILL LOOKS AND FEELERS 2011 PRISM 2011 FISHY LEAKS 2011 CREATURE CAST 2010 EMBODIMENT, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 2010 UTS: SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2010 ANTARCTIC VISIONS 2010 THINK CLIMATE 2010 POLAR PALOOZA 2009 GLOBEC 2008 SUR POLAR 2008 IMAGINING ANTARCTICA 2008 SEED DANCE 2007 ADAJIO 2007 ANIMATED DIALOGUES 2007 HOBART MIDWINTER FESTIVAL 2007 CHANGING NATURE 2006 JUST*ICE 2006 ICEMELT 2004 BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE 2003 IMPRESSIONS OF ANTARCTICA 2003 ROGET'S CIRCULAR 2002 TERRA INCOGNITA 1998 BEWARE OF PEDESTRIANS 1995
SEEDING TREATY, April 2019, ANTARCTIC CONNECTIONS AT THE END OF THE WORLD CONFERENCE, USHUAIA
Thanks to new media communication technologies our stories combine to seed treaties - or agreements - within our selves, between our selves, to identify as caretakers, not takers, of the natural world that sustains us.
Living Data: Seeding Treaty, 2019
Full credits
READING MOTHER COUNTRY, November 2018, HEALING OUR SPIRIT WORLD CONFERENCE, SYDNEY
Circling, spiralling and crossing forms express personal feelings of connection and collective scientific observations.
LENS ON HEALTH: DATA ARENA VIRTUAL JOURNEY, October 2018, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY
Indigenous and Western Views meet for National Science Week and Sydney Science Festival
Pedestrian Journey in the UTS Data Arena
Video: Lisa Roberts
Photos: Seastian Reategui
Music: Jason Benedek
Gumbayngirr story: with Gumbayngirr scientist and artist Chels Marshall
Presentation for the Boden Research Conference 2018,
'Ecological Surprises and Rapid Collapse of Ecosystems in a Changing World'
Shine Dome, Canberra, Australia
Oceanic Bliss:
From isolated heroes to interdisciplinary relationships
20 min presentation
BEWARE OF PEDESTRIANS TELLING STORIES at UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY DATA ARENA 2017
9 May 2017
Beware Of Pedestrians (BOP)is presented to students in the University of Technology Sydney
Data Arena.
Puppet design: Lisa Roberts. Code: Michael Lynch.
Content developed and curated by Lisa Roberts with scientists and other artists.
OCEANIC BLISS at MANLY ART GALLERY & MUSEUM 2016-2017
9 December 2016 - 19 February 2017
Oceanic Bliss: Living Seagrass
Manly Art Gallery & Museum.
Curators: Susan Milne & Katherine Roberts
Walk through Oceanic Bliss
Animated interactive installation
Manly Art Gallery & Museum
Created with William Gladstone
Video and editing: Lisa Roberts
OCEANIC BLISS at ERAMBOO ARTIST ENVIRONMENT 2016
Still from Oceanic Bliss animated installationdeveloped in collaboration with William Gladstone
SYDNEY INSTITUTE OF MARINE SCIENCE 2015
Dr Inke Falkner (right) and I install Oceanic Living Data objects and animations in the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS) Interpretation Centre. Dr Falkner developed the Centre to inspire everyone to understand, value and protect the marine environment. Photo: An Marosszeky
COMMUNICATION BY PHEREMONES: OCKHAM'S RAZOR 2015
Robyn Williams introduces Lisa Roberts on ABC Radio National,
Sunday 12 July 2015 7:45AM
CLIMARTE: ART OF THE ANTHROPOCENE, AUSTRALIAN GALLERIES MELBOURNE 2015
3 May 2015 - 24 May 2015 Climarte: Art of the Anthropocene: Cabinet of Curiosities Australian Galleries, Melbourne. Curator Mandy Martin
William L. Fox, Director,
Centre for Art + Environment,
Nevada Museum of Art,
opens the exhibition,
The Warming and Anthropocene
Cabinet of Curiosities,
Australian Galleries, Melbourne.
Sunday 3 May 2015
Photo: Josef Goding
OCEANIC LIVING DATA: ALIGN 2015
23 March 2015 - 30 April 2015 Living Data: AlignAnimation and objects Installation for Hothouse Waterways exhibition, Central Park, Sydney. Curator Andrew Tovey
Art and science align as objects and animations bring to human scale oceanic forms and processes. Data and gestures are drawn from life, photographed, traced, stitched, and combined to reflect an ancient choreography of waterways that sustains us.
Collaborators / advisors:
Sue Anderson, Lynchpin - the Ocean project
Professor Bill Gladstone, Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
Dr So Kawaguchi, Krill Biology, Australian Antarctic Division
Sue Fenech, Life Sciences, UTS
An Marosszeky, Designer / curator
Jason Benedek, New media artist / producer
Vikki Quill, Calligrapher / language consultant
Graham Howe, Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena
Will she feed the fish?
Homo phagus meets Diatom navicula: a love story for plant lovers
Navicula = boat-shaped
Inside a Diatom navicular lies Homo phagus.
She travels by boat to an after life.
Will she feed the fish?
LIVING DATA: EVOLVING CONVERSATIONS 2014
Wednesday 3rd Septemer 2014
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Camera: Sebastian Reategui
Production: Lisa Roberts
MC: PhD science candidate Dale Radford (UTS)
Living Data Leader/Interactive author: Dr Lisa Roberts (UTS)
Living Data Designer/Curator: Anita Marosszeky (UTS)
Speaker: Deputy Director, Institute of Environmental Studies Professor Mark Diesendorf (UNSW)
Official opening: Course Director Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation Dr Bem Le Hunte (UTS)
LIVING DATA AT BEIJING CITY INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL 2014
Beijing City International School in China hosts presentations of Living Data. Students across disciples respond with dance, writing and visual arts.
LIVING DATA: ART FROM CLIMATE SCIENCE 2013
OCEANIC SYDNEY:
Living Data presentation for the Art & About Sydney festival
Customs House, 14 Sept 2012
Animation: Lisa Roberts
Dance: Caterina Mocciola& Ashley Macqueen
Music: VOA- Catriona Davies & Ben DeMole
Photo: Yvette Worboys
Living Datacontributes to a growing global project to visualise human impacts on natural climate change. Our unique contribution is an evolving visualisation of reality as a vast complex system described in simple lines of human scale. Like a scientific model, the visualisation evolves to reflect new knowledge. Scientists and artists contribute stories, hypotheses, data and iconography. A choreography of primal gestural forms, in dance, drawing and animation, combines scientific and sensory ways of understanding.
IV ANTARCTIC ART & CULTURE CONFERENCE/FESTIVAL BUENOS AIRES 2012
ANTARCTIC TREATY CONSULTATIVE MEETING HOBART 2012
From 11-20 Jun 2012 Consultative Parties from around the world meet in Hobart "for the purpose of exchanging information, consulting together on matters of common interest pertaining to Antarctica, and formulating and considering and recommending to their Governments measures in furtherance of the principles and objectives of the Treaty" (Art. IX). This forum is the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM).
Words from Oceanic Living Data:
A floating screen of plankton mesh...
Illuminates Living Data.
Circling, Spiralling, Crossing lines...
describe natural systems...
physical, biological, emotional.
Glacial ice melts.
Krill stir the sea.
Diatoms drift.
Connectivity is felt and measured.
Antarctic sea ice pulses...
like breath.
Water energy flows.
Water molecules freeze and thaw.
The circumpolar current spins.
Cold bottom water spirals from Antarctica.
Nutrients are drawn up...
by krill and ocean currents.
Krill release eggs.
Sea levels rise.
Oceans warm.
More CO2 seeps into the water...
than many creatures can bear.
CO2 acidifies water.
Natural balance between plants and animals...
is tipping.
Is the problem human?
Anthroposcene?
Can the solution be human?
Can life as we know it adapt...
to increasing variability in temperature?
Human hands create...
to suit human desires.
Plants of the land and sea create...
the oxygen we breathe...
Words: Lisa Roberts with Sue Anderson and Steve Nicol
ANIMATING CHANGE 2012:
A Living Data exhibition for the Ultimo Science Festival, Sydney
A floating screen of plankton meshis illuminated by animationsthat combine hypotheses, stories, data and iconography shared by scientists and other artists. Like a scientific model, the installation has evolved to reflect current knowledge. The story is that a healthy environment maintains homeostasis (balance) between its parts and that human actions are tipping the natural balance. Recent data are graphs that show sea levels rising and diagrams that show changing patterns of growth in some plants and animals. Iconography are circling, spiraling and crossing lines that dynamically connect parts to suggest the whole system. Unlike a scientific model, this model can be touched. You can move through it and feel part of it.
This excerpt shows variability in the tempo of the music (by Sophie Green) and in the dance of marine algae (Hormosira banksii), waves, dancing hands (of Catherine Magill) and the opening of alveoli (air sacs) in the lungs at the moment of a child's first breath.
KRILL LOOKS AND FEELERS:
Expanding perceptions of climate change data
Theatrical script adapted by Daniela Giorgi and Lisa Roberts from the paper co-authored by Lisa and Steve Nicol:
Krill looks and feelers: a dialogue on expanding perceptions of climate change data pub. The Polar Journal Volume 1, Issue 2, 2011, pages 251-264
Photo: Caroline Huff
ANTARCTIC GARDEN PARTY:
PRISM 2011 CURRENT
2011 Crinoid with Sea levels rising
A discarded out-door lantern is the Prism exhibition space in the Antarctic Garden, Newtown, Sydney.
ANTARCTIC GARDEN PARTY:
FISHY LEAKS 2011 CURRENT
A discarded aquarium becomes the first FISHY LEAKS exhibit in the Antarctic Garden, Newtown, Sydney.
CREATURE CAST 2010 CURRENT
2010 Creature Cast, Dunn Lab, Brown University, USA
The animation, How do krill grow? features on a website that conveys scientific information through the arts.
EMBODIMENT, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Drawings of dancers interacting through improvised gestures feature on a poster presented by Eva Tillberg to support her research in movement therapy.
2010 Embodiment, Intersubjectivity and Psychopathology International conference, University of Heidelberg, Germany 30 Sept - 2 Oct 2010
During the last decade, the concept of embodiment has become a key paradigm of interdisciplinary approaches from the areas of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience. The body is no longer merely considered as an interesting input for the brain or mind. The new trend is to link embodiment, cognition and emotion in a deeper way, and this has particular repercussions for understanding our social engagements. This in turn has implications for psychopathology and psychotherapy, because embodied and intersubjective views on mental illness can offer new insights useful for diagnosis and remediation.
UTS: SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2010
The animation Antarctic Energies is presented at the Sydney International Film Festival, hosted by the University of Technology, Sydney, 24-26 September 2010.
The animation Antarctic Energies is presented at the Antarctic Visions conference, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, 22 June 2010.
The animation Antarctic Energies screens at Think Climate, ESP Gallery, Sydney, 7 July 2010. The event is convened by the artist Ingrid Dernee and sponsored by Climate Action Newtown (CAN)
Polar Palooza, Australian tour, November 2009
The animation Antarctic Energies screens with scientific presentations at Polar Palooza.
Animals of the poles: Presented by Mike Castellini and Rob King. Mike is a seal scientist, penguin enthusiast and veteran of more than 15 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. Rob is an expert on krill, the tiny but all-important base of the Antarctic food chain. Krill is food for penguins, seals and giant whales plus an indicator of the Southern Ocean's health.
Polar Palooza presentation notes
3rd GLOBEC Open Science Meeting, Victoria, Canada, 22-26 June 2009
The animation Energies is presented in the Workshop, Krill biology and ecology of the world oceans. See: PICES Newsletter).
Animations and art works are presented with Sur Polar in Beunos Aires (2008) and Mexico City (2008).
CURATOR: Andrea Juan, Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Philippe Boissonnet and Lorraine Beaulieu (Canada): Photography and object; Phil Dadson (New Zealand): Video installation; Karin Beaumont and Lisa Roberts (Australia): Objects, animation; Mireya Maso and Pamen Pereira (Spain): Photography and Drawing. Marina Curci (Argentina): Painting; Jorge Chikiar: Sound Installation; Adriana Groisman-Stefan Oliva (USA): Video; Marcelo Gurruchaga: Photography; Andrea Juan Argentina): Video Installation; Alberto Morales (Argentina): Painting; Jorge y Lucy Orta (Britain): Video. Essays by Annick Bureaud (France) and Nina Colosi (USA).
The animation Imagining a different view is screened at the conference Imagining Antarctica in September 2008 at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Examining the Earth's southernmost continent from a cultural perspective will be on the agenda for those taking part in an Antarctic Conference being held at the University of Canterbury next month. The Imagining Antarctica Conference is being convened and hosted by Gateway Antarctica, UC's centre for Antarctic studies and research, in partnership with Massey University and the University of Tasmania.
Drawing on the arts, social sciences and humanities, the three-day conference from 4-6 September will focus attention on the ways we perceive and represent the frozen continent. It will be the first humanities-based Antarctic studies conference and will be followed in 2010 by another at the University of Tasmania in Hobart.
'For Gateway Antarctica and the University of Canterbury this conference on Antarctic arts complements the usual conferences we hold on Antarctic science,' said Gateway Antarctica Centre Manager and conference convenor Michelle Rogan-Finnemore . 'Our aim is to highlight the multi-disciplinary aspects of Antarctic research.'
Imagining Antarctica has been timed to coincide with The Press Christchurch Writers' Festival and a number of the conference's keynote addresses will be delivered by international writers also in town to speak at the literary event.
One of these is English writer Francis Spufford, the author of I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English imagination, a seminal and award-winning cultural history of the British obsession with polar exploring. He will open the conference with a talk looking at the roles for the southern continent in twentieth century culture.
Another highlight of the conference will be the public talk by author and broadcaster Vanessa Collingridge on the evening of Thursday 4 September (the opening session of the writers' festival). She will focus on her acclaimed biography of eighteenth century explorer Captain James Cook, which was made into a prize-winning documentary series Captain Cook: Obsession and Discovery which aired on Prime in New Zealand earlier this year.
The third keynote speaker at the conference is American Dr Elena Glasberg from Princeton University whose dissertation on 'Antarcticas of the Imagination' led to a life-long academic interest in Antarctica, studied from a number of perspectives including postcolonial studies and geopolitics, feminism, law and science.
Home-grown talent included in the line-up of speakers includes poet and creative writing lecturer Professor Bill Manhire, poet and playwright Bernadette Hall and photographer Ann Noble.
University of Canterbury Publications and Development
I perform with the artist Christine McMillan, as part of her installation, Animated Seeds.
In response to watching the animation, Ice Sound, high school student Aidan Davis writes a poem, Iceberg. I engrave his poem into recycled sheets of Perspex.
I present my proposal to research Antarctic Animation:
The aim of this research is first to collect evidence of what the scientists, and others who have worked in Antarctica, have observed and responded to in the landscape; second to devise an on-line animated interface through which to engage viewers with both the science and poetics of the data. Animation will be used to increase understanding of changes in Antarctic landscape as identified in the records provided by Antarctic workers - the people who have studied it, and physically endured a full year of its changing landscape.
Lisa Roberts Animated Dialogues 2007 Conference Programme p. 28
The Animated Dialogues conference was hosted by Monash University and the Victorian College of the Arts.
Animated Dialogues brings together scholars from a range of disciplines whose work brings critical perspectives to bear on animation industries, texts and audiences. This event offers a rare opportunity for academics and other professionals from Australia and overseas to network and share their viewpoints on a wide array of animation topics shaped by their cross-disciplinary interests related to the study of animation.
Conference programme notes, June 2007
HOBART MIDWINTER FESTIVAL 2007
The 'Changing Nature' exhibition explores the profound changes being imposed on global and local natural places by climate change and technology. It invites considerations of the symbolic place of nature in our lives, how we shape our environment and how it shapes us? What does it mean to be human in a world where genetic engineering and nanotechnology are set to reshape our world gene by gene, atom by atom? What are the implications of humans changing the climate and altering the cycles of nature upon which life depends?
Changing Nature Program notes, 2006
November 22nd 2006, The Gallery at Darling Park, 201 Sussex Street, Sydney CBD.
BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE 2003
Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Stop the destruction of old growth forests in Tasmania. Styx: The Valley of the Giants fundraiser. With guest speakers Bob Brown & Susan Norrie. Friday 28 November 2003. Plus Auction. Until Saturday 6 December 2003. All proceeds go to The Wilderness Society. Mori Gallery 168 Day street Sydney 2000. Open Wednesday - Saturday 11 to 6 or by appointment. morigallery.com.au
IMPRESSIONS OF ANTARCTICA 2003
A mixed exhibition featuring the works of participants in the Australian Antarctic Division Humanities Program. Glimpse Antarctica afresh through the eyes of this vast array of talented people and share their impressions. Experience the profound effect that Antarctica has had on their lives.
Jenny Whitaker, Antarctic Arts Fellowship co-ordinator, Australian Antarctic Division, 2003
Lisa travelled to Antarctica on the RSV Aurora Australis in February 2002, visiting Davis and Mawson stations. She kept a journal "gathering material with which to convey something of the experience", which has become a wellspring for the production of drawings, paintings, photographs, an animated interactive CDROM and other more eclectic works.
Cathy Bruce, Antarctic Arts Fellowship co-ordinator, Australian Antarctic Division, 2004
Roget's Circular (Roget) is an interactive animated work that combines the responses that two artists made to places in Australia and Europe. Media elements including images, words, sounds, and animations, were developed in collaboration with Melissa Smith. Roget was exhibited as a touch screen installation in a suitcase, surrounded by drawings, paintings and other objects that were made as it was developed.
Four main ideas emerged from reviewing Roget's Circular:
1. That my European forebears represented environments as static landscapes provoked the idea that animation could be used to convey an experience of moving through them.
2. Because people who have worked in Antarctica describe it as possibly the most dynamic and elemental environment, an sense of being there may be described through simple gestures and line drawings that reflect their knowledge.
3. Digital animations can be arranged on interfaces with art works and written texts to represent the same environment from different perspectives.
4. In Roget, artistic responses of two women were combined to describe some environments around some easily accessible places. To describe Antarctica, the most inaccessible continent, would require access to the knowledge of people who have observed and experienced it. Ways of working with more than one person would be needed to gather and record how people describe their knowledge of Antarctica.
Roget's Circular is a unique multimedia work ...
Created by two artists, it draws on the Australian landscape, and on imagination, memory and family history.
Susan Butler, Editor, Macquarie Dictionary, 2002
Terra Incognita is an interactive animated work that reflects the creative process of Australian writer, Carmel Bird. Its maze-like site map was conceived as a visual display of the serendipitous nature of her creative process. This structure displays media elements in a way that suggested chance encounters.
A sense of chance encounters, with people and places, was replicated in Antarctic Animation by arranging texts on screens in different combinations.
Central to this exhibition is Beware of Pedestrians,an animated improvised dance that explores the expressive potential of human gesture. A digital human form was adapted from a model developed for use in osteopathy to observe lines of force as they move through the body (Parsons and Marcer, 2006, Illus.).