(Brackets signify images and animations):
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Antarctic landscape is beyond the experience of most of us. (map, brain, coil head)
To some it can seem terrifyingly remote. (there be monsters)
But if we want to learn what the future holds, for our children and grandchildren, it is important to find ways to connect with this place. (sea ice extent)
Antarctica holds evidence of our planet’s changing nature. (ice cores)
Antarctica can change a person’s nature. (beset)
Living and working in close quarters, in isolation from the rest of the world, we become mindful of the impact of our actions – reflecting upon ourselves, each other, and the landscape. (people working together, observing, measuring)
Artists and writers have used ice as a metaphor for self-reflection.(Mount Fuji)
You often hear it said that being in Antarctica can be life-changing.
Animation is the visual language of change.
Can animation be used to take us into the landscape, to feel something of these changes?
Animation has been used, in mainstream cinema, to show the impact of our actions on the happiness of penguins. (Happy Feet)
The Happy Feet story reached large audiences, and raised awareness of Antarctic wildlife.
But did the film’s extreme distortion of shapes and colours help to connect us with the landscape?
Or did it push it further back in people’s minds, remaining that ‘unreal’ place, so easily overlooked as mattering?
Scientists use animation to visualise important data. (c02)
But how can non-scientists connect with these? (animated graph)
As stilted, moving graphs, some visualisations can seem remote from human experience. (examples)
Others “breathe”. (SIE)
When the motion is organic – and more like how we move – we can connect more easily with the data.
With this as the premise, I am working with dancers, to move and draw, to the words of expeditioners writing from the ice. (Jack words, studio shot, drawing, animation)
I am animating voices describing moments of pleasure in the landscape.
There is pleasure in feeling, and knowing and doing.
Connecting to a moment of pleasure in Antarctica, can cut through the fear that some feel.
It can help to remove the blind spot.