The Unseen – art and science

Find out more about this Sustainable Seas challenge arts-science-education project called The Unseen. Gabby O’Connor and marine ecologists are working with communities and school children to explore the risks associated with environmental and climate change and how this might affect the way we manage New Zealand’s marine ecosystems.

At the end of 2017 this project had involved 14 workshops, 1,300 school children and 15 km of rope!

Transcript

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Making the unseen world and complicated concepts visible.

An arts-science-education project working with communities and school children to explore the risk associated with environmental and climate change and how this might affect the way we manage New Zealand’s marine ecosystems.

Gabby O’Connor, Artist

This project is part of my research, ok so thank you so much for participating.

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Gabby creates art that reflects her experience with scientific research.

She often involves students and communities in the creation of her artworks, connecting people with the science and beauty of the natural world.

For this Sustainable Seas project, Gabby has run 14 schools workshops with 1,300 children.

Vonda Cummings, Marine ecologist

Have you heard of ocean acidification? There’s lots of nods – cool. So with global warming you can end up making the sea more acidic. So we want to know how animals might cope and what they might look like in 10 or so years, what those communities look like.

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At each workshop Gabby was accompanied by a marine scientist who gave a presentation about their research investigating marine environments and species – and how they are being affected by human activities and environmental change.

Gabby O’Connor

You’ll be drawing with the rope, experimenting with a two dimensional pattern and shape. It’s almost like that there is just going to be a map of how you have learnt things today.

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Pairs of students were given rope and cable ties to ‘draw’ with.

The pairs paired up, joining their rope art together.

The groups got bigger and so did the artworks…

…into one big collaborative artwork inspired by the research and art presentations.

These will be joined into a giant network, to be exhibited in Nelson, March–April 2018.

During the exhibition there will be open community workshops and follow up workshops for the children.

The work will be re-exhibited several times until 2020, then dismantled. The cable ties will be recycled and the rope donated to schools, community and aid groups that have a use for it.

This Sustainable Seas Challenge project will help us to understand the best ways to share science information and tools. This is important because ecosystem-based management (EBM) will only work if communities, iwi, industry and resource managers understand and have trust in those data and tools.