Ground Truth
1-8 archival inkjet print stills 2010, from the DV floor projection /installation Re-Imaging Nature UOW (2008). Further info.
In remote sensing ground truth refers to information collected on location in the field and its correlation and calibration with satellite data.
These prints are of sites in the Antarctic Peninsula and Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland. The images are from the digital video floor projections that formed the installation Ground Truth and part of my research project Re-Imaging Nature (UOW 2008).
The experience and observation of vegetation in extreme environments through field trips with ecologists, in biological collections and in research facilities, was central to this study of historic and contemporary images in science.
Antarctic Peninsula 2004
Visiting the Antarctic Peninsula as artist in residence on the M/V Lyubov Orlova 2004 was an opportunity to experience its vegetation and extended my study of the relationship between images, technology and science (Re-Imaging Nature, UOW 2008).
Professor Sharon Robinson’s ecophysiological studies of Antarctic mosses and climate change, her use of confocal microscopy and other techniques were central to my research of contemporary images in ecology. The trip also prompted further research in the Herbarium Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh of historic moss specimens collected by JD Hooker (Ross expeditions HMS Erebus 1839-43) and the illustrations of Walter Hood Fitch in The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage (Flora Antarctica) of 1844.
My visual art practice, installations, media works and researching images in art science (Re-Imaging Nature, UOW, 2008; SPECTRA 2012: images and data in art science, CSIRO), has enabled me to undertake field trips to the saltbush of Lake Mungo, NSW, peatlands of the Bogong High Plains, Victoria, Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland, the Antarctic Peninsular, and visit into significant scientific collections and facilities in the UK and Australia, the CSIRO Biological Collections and the Australian Synchrotron. In the 2019 artist residency at University of Wollongong I collaborated with Dr Jo Law (TAEM) and the Janet Cosh Herbarium Archive to curate the project re-site: levels of inquiry.