Arctic Listening Post
Jane D Marsching and collaborator Matthew Nolan
Arctic Listening Post, is a multi-layered piece that centres on the cultural history of the Arctic
Creative contribution
What was the significant innovation in approach or thinking behind the project/artwork? How can this be recognisably attributed to the involvement of creative practice?
Arctic Listening Post, is a multi-layered piece that centres on the cultural history of the Arctic, the region’s increasing climate changes, and how the area is portrayed in popular media.
Collaboration
What were the disciplinary contributors to the project? What model of research / development was followed? What were factors leading to success / problems?
Marsching was in part inspired by Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams (1986), a non-fictional account of the author’s fifteen trips to the Arctic. However the main inspiration for Arctic Listening Post came in early 2005 when Marsching stumbled upon an Arctic webcam operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Subsequently the approached Matthew Nolan, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who shared his data and research with her,ensuring the project’s factual accuracy.
Values
What were the outcomes of the project? How were these disseminated to outside stakeholders? What models of value are implied by this project? What was the Impact of the work?
A key component of Arctic Listening Post is the participatory website, Climate Commons, online November 27, 2006 through March 11, 2007. Marsching describes the site as “a networked conversation . . . similar to a group blog.” Online, readers/participants collectively discuss, via uploaded posts, global ecological issues. Marsching invited 12 core conversationalists from various fields, ranging from scientists to journalists, to post information on their research, though anyone who accesses the site can read the posts and respond to them. Marsching designed the site to feature a hexagonal on-screen conversation model, with visual “cells” representing related discussion topics, so readers can easily find and select relevant threads.
Links and Resources
http://channel.creative-capital.org/project_925.html
