About

Abstract

ABSTRACT - 26 December 2008

Changes in the Antarctic continent provide compelling evidence to scientists of global warming, but what scientists are seeing there is not widely understood by the general public. Some people need to feel connected with a place before they can approach understanding how it works. People go as strangers to Antarctica to measure its physical changes, or to experience what they imagine it to be like. Some return changed themselves, struggling to describe being in a place like no other on earth, and yet connecting profoundly with it. Antarctic expeditioners use visual and gestural metaphors to communicate their scientific observations and aesthetic responses. Animations made with these metaphors offer observers empathic connections with Antarctica through their visual-kinesthetic senses. This thesis animates and documents encounters with Antarctica, and with its expeditioners and other artists, that reflect the reality of our physical connection with the natural world that can be known through art and science. Connecting scientific and aesthetic worldviews through animated human gestures suggests a collective rather than a divisive sense of our place in the physical world.