Images from Postcards to the Peninsula + Our Island

All welcome! Citizen Sci Art.

Our Island - the travelling show-
 art work by Stewart Islanders 

'Our Island' art work was very much admired.

Frottage, rubbing over printing plates

Drawing thaumatrope imagery
 - guided by team member Ali Rogers.

                    Thaumatrope making

Thaumatrope making on the stage and postcard printing
going down alongside the Stewart Islanders Exhibition

Anticipation at the press bed.

Postcards were curated to chew card size.
Love how this print mimics her top and she did too.

A fantastic response from the community.
 Assisted here by The Sandpit Collective innovator and
team member Jenny Rock.

Cathy sharing info on rats and possums at the
Otago Peninsula Biodiversity Group 'pledge' table.

Participants printed two postcards -
one to keep and one for a communal art work.
 Assisted here by team member Ellen Sima.

Making a pledge - recorded on the back of the prints

Reading messages and pledges

At the end of day one.

Citizen Sci-Art FROM STEWART ISLAND TO THE OTAGO PENINSULA

What is on the other side of these thaumatrope's?

I am very excited to have been appointed,on a casual basis, as a Citizen Sci-Art Research Assistant this year. First up is co-hosting Stewart Island/Rakiura community’s inspirational travelling art exhibition on conservation & predator-removal at the Coronation Hall, Portobello, Dunedin on 27-28th  FEB Sat + Sun  11am - 6pm.

Everyone is welcome and of particular relevance to Peninsula residents will be the Otago Peninsula Biodiversity Group’s latest news. Explore their techniques hands-on, & find out how YOU can help out on your own section in operation ‘Beyond Possums’.

http://www.pestfreepeninsula.org.nz/

Child friendly activity: Come and create your own thaumatrope (“wonder turner”) toy - just like kids their age in the 19th century played with. This simple toy blazed a trail for animation as we know it today. Thanks to a phenomenon called "persistence of vision" and through spinning a disc you can create the optical illusion of two images in one. There are lots of possibilities of what you could draw but for starters I like the idea of putting a possum in a trap or a bee on a flower. (The spinning in the video is a little over enthusiastic but you get the idea.)

Yes, the portable printing press will be at the Hall. Jenny Rock and I will be there to help you try your own hand at making a print about local wildlife.

* Drop-in it’s informal: take a look, have a try, settle in, come back! Everyone welcome (kids w/ adult supervision); gold coin donation.

Contact for more info: TheSandpitCollective@gmail.com

Art and Light

Celebrating the UNESCO International Year of Light, the Art and Light Exhibition is a collaboration between the Dunedin School of Art and the University of Otago Departments of Physics, Botany, Anatomy, Physiology and Computer Science, hosted by the Otago Museum.

13 artists created visual responses to scientific research in collaboration with 13 scientists.  I was paired with my daughter Petra Fersterer and got some insight into her research on Trapping Ultra Cold Atoms in Optical Lattices. It was complicated, however I found my first link by mimicking her process of writing up notes on a whiteboard - I chose to cover up a large wall with a blackboard.

Paper blackboard made as a way to process information.

Detail from the blackboard showing the aspects of the
science which interested me the most

 Petra's work is purely theoretical so I made some of her notes and diagrams into solar plates and printed them. This seemed like a relevant process, being that solar plate is processed with light and I felt like I was 'trapping' the imagery.

Petra's notes overlaid with a squiggle filter to
echo a Feynman diagram 

Initial printed proofs including the 'fringe' -excess information

Masters student Kris Roberts is undertaking experimental research similar to Petra's. He works in the Neils Kjaegaards Lab and Petra's research is the maths behind what happens in the Lab. I was struggling to visualise what to make until Kris gave me a tour of the Lab. After this I went home and pulled some old camera's apart and the idea of making lenses full of information started evolving.

Neils Kjaegaards Lab, Otago University

 I was particularly fascinated with the notion that atoms change when you observe them and so I started distressing small round mirrors. I had varying degrees of success (i.e. lots of shattered glass) with printing and etching directly onto the glass however I did achieve surfaces that change when you look at them. Thanks to my friend Julie Whitefield who taught me the glass etching and made the stencils.

Pendant/Lens trials. 30mm

etching mirror glass

A challenge of the project for me was using imagery that was theoretical and not something I was initially aesthetically attracted to.  After some time I found my voice and added in things that were optical grids to me, such as a crochet doily pattern. I had a frenzy of over printing and layering some prints towards a point of visual confusion to communicate my difficulty in learning about the quantum world. Discs were then cut from the 
prints and embedded in a bezel with a mirror and a layer of clear resin.

layered prints

Sample of prints before being overlaid with a mirror and resin

detail of pendants - 120 made in total

Petra found the project valuable in having to explain her research to a different audience so they could understand it as she is used to communicating with people having a similar or higher level of physics training as she does.

Installation

Child and pendant installation. Thanks to Craig Scott from
 Otago Museum who added a large mirror backdrop.

 The pendants are available for purchase as I like the idea that people wear the pendants, the art is then mobile, a bit like the probability of places where an atom could be – it is in all places, it is here, it is there.   

 Atoms are coherent, here too they shine a bit
 of reflected light on each other.  

http://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2015/art-light-exhibition/dunedin