OPEN WATERS OPEN POLAR SEA

Open Waters Open Polar Sea is an interdisciplinary, interactive multimedia artwork inspired by a five-hundred-year history of expeditions that sought to find the Arctic Northwest Passage and Open Polar Sea. Through a constellation of interconnected pieces including an interactive book and interactive wall projection, Open Waters reworks a number of discursive and visual genres across disciplines. This body of work was on exhibit at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York from December 13, 2019 – March 29, 2020.

An interactive book features a suite of archival poems on Arctic exploration, politics, and ecological change. As the viewer/reader turns the pages of this print-digital hybrid book (below left), projected digital generative art and poetic text intermingle recombinantly with printed text.

The interactive back wall of the gallery (below right) combines video and audio generative works that respond to the activity present in the room, evoking the effects of human disruption of the Arctic environment.

Open Waters also considers the global circulation of microplastics through large format photographs of plastic pollution in Buffalo waterways; an animated, dynamic video projection (below right) that incorporates research poetry on plastics pollution in the Great Lakes system; and a floor assemblage (above left) incorporating locally collected used commodity plastics as well as raised etched glass panels depicting a historical water route from Buffalo to the Northwest Passage.

The collaborative intent of Open Waters Open Polar Sea project allowed for interdisciplinary synergy between a creative team spanning poetry, computer science, electronic sound composition, and visual art, expanding the technological and creative means by which the historical information about the arctic could be conveyed and expressed. Our collaborative team plans on an ongoing series of installations that bring art and science together immersively and interactively to educate the public about the Arctic: its status as an important strand in the history of globalization; its potential to reconfigure contemporary networks of global relations; its function as a bellwether of the transformation of Earth systems.

Interactive book video link runs :35 seconds:

Interactive back wall video link runs 1:14 minutes:

keywords: generative, audio-visual, physical/virtual, climate, environment, digital poetics