#disastercene

Our journey this semester has brought us together, to raise awareness about the issues that stem from natural disasters and extreme-weather events, in relation to our current management of waste materials and fossil fuels, which could be exacerbating our contributions to the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, is the proposed current geological age, characterized by human domination of the planetary system (Malhi, 2017). Humans are changing the earth at such an alarming rate, causing mass extinctions of animals and plants. These collective changes have been so enormous and significant, that they warranted their very own epoch, a feat which would have taken millions of years, yet we have managed to accomplish in only a handful of decades. It has meant that the actual physiology of the earth we walk on, has accumulated an unimaginable array of toxic materials, that pose a threat to not just the species we share the planet with, but to our very own food chain. We ask ourselves, is this the legacy we want to leave behind for the future generations? We barely grasp how our own actions are affecting us at present, and frankly, we may never know the extent of our mistakes during our time, but the people who will call this planet home years from now, will have inherited an unprecedented problem: the possibility our own extinction as a species has never been so sobering. Natural disasters disperse devastatingly large quantities of waste materials, often over large distances, and within a very short time period. (Skinner, 2011) They reflect the reality of our own collective habits in their destruction and persistence. We are seeing more and more that, the evidence of the “butterfly effect” in all systems that make up the planet’s biology, and we need to acknowledge our role in the scheme of things and start these conversations, even if they mean conjuring pain and discomfort. Being in New Zealand, we are constantly under threat of earthquakes and cyclones and volcanic eruptions, due to being located in the ring of fire, and surrounded by the southern oceans. The effects of climate change, are especially apparent to us and our neighbors. This is an opportunity to stand-up as world leaders and innovators when it comes to tackling with these issues, that clearly affect all nations equally. One thing is for sure, we cannot solve all these complex problems on our own. We got to this point collectively, so let us help each other through these dark times, as a community. Disastercene was created through a shared vision, Ben played a role in mostly everything, but main tasks were creating the physical landscape and sound editing, as well as managing the team. Logan was in charge of TouchDesigner, our tool of choice for exhibiting the piece, and Emir was in charge of Video Editing. Working with light-based projection-mapping symbolizes our own determination in helping to lead each other out of the darkness.

Above shows a big progression for our project. It took me quite a long time to get my head around some of touchdesigners mechanics. I found particularly difficult as it was hard to find tutorials and information online. And when I did find a tutorial it was usually for an older version of the program which was completely different to the program i’m using. So after a lot of trial and error I managed to project a non moving image of how we wanted our terrain to look. Next step focus on the back wall and change the landscape from an image to a moving video as we want our landscape to look alive

My team including Ben, EJ and myself have decided to work on a project together with the aim of addressing and visualizing the Anthropocene, more specifically to visually show and tell the story of man’s destructively transformational relationship with our environment on earth. For our installation we have planned to physically create a New Zealand like landscape structure out of Paper Mache and Wire. We then plan to use projection mapping on this landscape to then edit a video story line on the landscape. To create this video, we need New Zealand landscape footage (Volcanoes, beaches, forests, towns etc). We will do this with a mixture of captured drone footage and clips pulled from the internet. Once we have all this landscape footage we will create natural disaster scenarios which will transform the landscape and then carry and solidify human produced  waste into the Earth, environment and Eco systems. We have decided to name our installation “Disastercene”. This name comes from the mixture of the words Anthropocene and disaster. We have divided tasks and areas to work on between group members. Ben will focus on the construction of the landscape and sound, EJ will focus on video editing, and I will focus on the projection mapping and piecing everything together.