Blue green algae grow in the tank containing seawater from Rauma archipelago for the duration of the exhibition. Micro controllers adjust the level of nutrients (Phosphorus, Nitrogen), CO2 and oxygen optimal for the algae. During the exhibition, new samples of algae are introduced to the tank.

See more http://marin.cc/bluegreen.

Due to the winds and rapid transit mode, the last part of the journey which was to be transit mode anyhow, was not ok for looking at a computer screen at any length of time. Hence logging data on this trip was not an option. As a sailing experience, it proved that the boat can do auto pilot mode well up to 20 m/s and at higher winds with hand steering, it behaves still very well.

I managed to pack all the gear into my car and drive from Niva harbour via Stockholm to Turku and onto Helsinki.
The project will be still developed further over the next months, but the actual new research and residency season will start in April/May in 2010 with the focus on the Baltic Sea.

M.A.R.I.N. residency can be developed a lot, of course, but what is exciting is that even with a year’s lead to production this Irish Sea residency was a great success. I would like to thank the participating artists, sailors and collaborators on shore, and not least, all the funders who made the work possible.

Image of Isle of Man before sunset.

Workshop participants have contributed with sound, video and stills, some of which you can listen to at Ecolocated Pool group page. For example, youth from DropZone at Barrow-in-Furness did an hour long rap with their own rhymes, and Tate Youth contributed interviews with friends and family of the changing maritime culture of Liverpool. Some fragments are also uploaded to the Ecolocated map based interface, which includes arrival ship blog to Belfast, and audio and water quality data sonifications around the Albert Dock. An experimental stage version of this interface can also be viewed on 3G mobile phones using your browser, and the URL http://marin.cc/ecolocated/mobile.

You can read blog entries by the resident artists Tapio Mäkelä (FI), Nigel Helyer (AU) and Andreas Siagian (ID), who have collaborated on the project Ecolocated – Littoral Lives.

In Belfast, the Ecolocated team was joined by Michael Lake and Daniel Woo, with whom we authored a major 12-channel surround sound, locative installation, presented at Catalyst Arts gallery, as part of ISEA2009, The International Symposium on Electronic Art. In this work we worked with local marine scientists, historians, ex dock workers and other collaborators. We also measured water quality in the Belfast Lough, map of which was the interface for our project. The end result was a collage where users could navigate through several layers of audio, sonified and visualized data.

Also part of the exhibit here at FACT, The CDPDU (Common Data Processing and Display Unit, M.A.R.I.N. Alpha) by Marko Peljhan, Nejc Trost, and Matthew Biederman, draws satellite marine ecology data and environmental sensor data from a field unit in Santa Barbara, CA, as well as some data from a sister project’s (Arctic Perspective Initiative) expedition to Baffin Bay last month.
In Liverpool, M.A.R.I.N. had a very interesting visit to the British Oceanographic Data Centre, and The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. We participated to a Shelf sea workshop, where scientists (and electronic engineers really) discussed latest sea bed velocity sensors, HF radar for wave detection. In the basement of BODC we saw a sonde that makes our water measurement equipment seem like kids play: a gliding torpedo shaped UAV, which uses ballast to zigsaw through the ocean. At the end of an inspiring tour, a discussion with 7 researchers opened up real possibilities for future collaboration ranging from semantic, cartographic, visual and haptic interfaces to environmental data.

We move off but resume our sampling work as soon as the official disappears, we must look more convincing to the next chap as he is very pleased to see us and wishes us luck with our research! If it was ten degrees warmer I would fancy a dip in the Albert Dock, the water looks surprisingly clear and the dock walls support a profusion of marine life, principally large Mussels much favoured by immature Herring Gulls who pluck them off and litter the pontoons with the empty shells. Later I discover that the Dock water is tested every two weeks and is of Swimmable quality.

We sample along the narrow-boat pontoons in the Salthouse dock and chat with the barge owners, proud of their craft and the heritage of industrial revolution waterways. They are a direct and friendly bunch who unanimously agree that the waterways are radically improved over the past twenty years. It is clearly evident that Britain’s post-industrial condition and the transition from primary industry to a service economy has bought tangible environmental benefits. One could say that Thatcher’s confrontation with the Mining unions that destroyed a major part of working class culture and an entire industry in one fell swoop has ironically set the pre-conditions allowing country to move away from a Carbon based economy!

8th September – they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that is how we commenced our first workshop with the DropZone lads in Barrow in Furnace – armed with a well prepared power-point brimming with interesting content, our minds primed with burning environmental and economic issues. From a navigational perspective we were way off our mark – the power-point acted like a sleeping draft and our questions probing the local environmental and economic situation ricocheted around the room, in short we had seriously misread the local context.

We struggled, we floundered and at three pm all the lads abruptly stood up and announced they were off – end of story! Maybe, we suggest to the youth workers, the lads could think about our topics and collect some oral histories and photos (please!).

15th September
We stay overnight in Tapio’s Manchester apartment and on the morning of the 15th September Andreas and I drive up to Barrow for our second session, not really knowing what to expect. This time the session is in the DropZone centre and the crew are feeling more at home, playing pool and armed with laptops. Karen, one of the youth workers, had taken them on a Barrow-wide excursion and produced a good range of images but still no audio recordings. Again we tried in a very casual manner to encourage the crew to talk about their experiences and perceptions of growing up in Barrow, with its single industry economy, the Nuclear Submarine business, but again we encountered a mix of reluctance and resistance.

One of the lads had written a rap especially for the workshop and I began to nudge him gently to perform it but again no dice. Looking around the chill-out space we realised that it was equipped with a DJ rig so we try again with the rap business and suddenly the penny dropped – we were saying it was cool to turn the decks on in the middle of the day. The youth workers flinched a bit but the surge of enthusiasm was overwhelming, the guys exchanged their reticence and truculence for high-octane activity – and so the afternoon continued, high volume, high energy and total immersion in the medium. We end the day with a series of high-fives and dude handshakes – think we survived the experience!

The moral of the story – The Medium is the Message.

After visited Liverpool’s main attraction, Cap took me on a small boat tour cruising from Coburg dock to Albert dock. Cap have an idea to do a business with our small boat by giving a tour, rivalling TheYellowDuckMarine! After one second of hard thinking, I said no! We decided to amuse orself by sightseeing along the canals that connecting the docks.

All this short exploration have showned strong maritime history and culture of the city! The big docks and ports in Liverpool remind me of an old belief in Indonesia saying; “A great kingdom must have a great Naval force”. This belief have been one of the foundation of the three early kingdom in Indonesia named: Tarumanagara, Sriwijaya and Majapahit. We can also see simillar things of the kingdoms in South East Asia through Ayuttaya Kingdom in Thailand who also have strong maritime history in the past. It’s too bad there’s so little evidence of such beautiful docks in Indonesia comparing as we seen in Liverpool and Bangkok. I guess we can’t be too greedy and satisfied with the temples.

After spending several days in Whitehaven, we finally have a clear sky to head sail to Liverpool. We say goodbye to the Harbor Master in the afternoon as we headed south with small waves on our path. We’re doing 6 knots in average with the help of mild winds on our sail, slowly “drift” us to our destination. The landscape view was amazing with several old structures stand on it. One of it was an old coal mine on top of the hill located in south of Whitehaven.

We passed across Sellafield, an old nuclear powerplant that is located near the shore on our way south.We took a water quality reading while we were on the nearest shore to Sellafield, looking for some environmental hazard on the site. Our equipment were unable to detect such things, the reading was quite normal. It seems that if the problem was there, it will need more advance equipment and intensive research to be done to detect such. We stored the data to sonify it during AND festival in Liverpool.

As we enjoyed the sail until night came, Nigel and I were talking and having hot tea to warm ourselves from the cold breeze. Nigel spotted tiny blue-green light on the surface of the sea. They appeared as small light many times by the ripple path from the catamaran. Looking at it’s size and light intensity, there’s only one possibility explaining what it was. Bioluminescence, a light emission produced by a certain marine micro-organism from an phylum called dinoflagellates was responding to the vibration from the ripple from the catamaran. This interesting creature have created an interesting discusssion between us. It was unexpected sighting for us to saw them in Liverpool bay since as far as we knew that most of them were seen in warmer sea region.

As we approcahed Liverpool dock, wind turbines welcome us with their blinking red lights. We didn’t knew them at the beginning and thought they were the main entrance to Mersey River. I really enjoyed the sailing experience on this day and was also capturing what Nigel have wrote in this blog; WhiteHaven to Liverpool; An Illustrated History of Power. The main fossil fuel that is used by human for generating power today is coal. The thermodynamic of coal powerplant used today is about 30%, which means about 70% of it will turn in to waste heat. Dinoflagellates however, have gone through millions of years evolution to produce their own light emission. What an advance tiny creatures they are.

As we reached Liverpool Marina in the early morning, we were too tired to do anything more. The sail was great but nearly took our entire energy the whole day. After I desalinate myself, I was imagining a city with light bulbs powered by dinolagellates. An advance light emission by converting chemicals to energy. Or Chemiluminescence: Maybe? Crazy! or: Nice!