ECOLOCATED – Littoral Lives
Tapio Mäkelä (FI), Nigel Helyer (AU) & Andreas Siagian (ID)
+ collaborating researchers and communities
08-09 / 2009: IRISH SEA, ISEA 2009 BELFAST
The project engages with a raft of geo-political and ecological issues posed by human impact upon marine ecosystems, especially around the harbor of Belfast. The littoral zones link marine life with that on land. Our project is also poetic in its attempt to create ecological agency, willingness to form opinion and take up action regarding marine ecological degradation at specific sites.
We will operate a mobile water sampling bio-sensing station in conjunction with a met station to observe pollution and over-nutrition (on board M.A.R.I.N. residency). We will also use existing data such as oceanography and GIS information. As outputs, we will publish a daily “ecolocated blog”, publish podcasts and produe a location based media installation with sonic and ecological data combined with interviews and maritime narratives of the sites.
We will realize workshops that are an important aspect of collaborative authoring and research of the Ecolocated project.
Ship ahoy – we hope also to run an offshore FM radio!
M.A.R.I.N. Nordic – Baltic Workshop Series
Art, Science and Ecology at the Nordic Seas is the theme for our Nordic – Baltic Sea Research and Residency Project, with partners including Pixelache (Helsinki), Lorna (Reykjavik), Copenhagen Dream House /Half-Machine (Copenhagen), Rix-C (Riga), Plektrum (Tallinn), Humlab (Umeå), and i/o lab (Stavanger).
We are waiting for funding decisions to realize the workshop series. If successful, we will realize the following in different configurations with our partners over the next two years:
1. Workshops in harbors
2. Art and science collaborative research work on board M.A.R.I.N. catamaran sail boat (30 days each).
3. Presentation of results in public events.
The collaborating organizations co-host the workshops and public presentations and build networks with local science, ecology, and other communities in their region. Marin Association manages the production of the events in collaboration with one person from each organization, as well as facilitates the research and production on board of M.A.R.I.N. vessel.
Themes of the workshops and residencies include:
o Baltic Sea marine ecology
o Sustainable energy technologies (solar, wind, bio technologies)
o North and Arctic Sea marine ecology (Norwegian coast up to Murmansk)
o Art residency as a sustainable, mobile platform
o Climate change as a wider framework
o Mapping, open source navigation and low power computing for the seas