Submersive Atmospheres

Invasive

The Language we use matters. Not only is what we say important, but who says it. Invasive explores the use of scientific language and its potential emotional consequences when reinterpreted through different creative lenses. Taking suggested words from debates in invasive species literature, it offers alternative understandings of this terminology by combining responses from two sources. Humans and Artificial Intelligence. By offering different creative interpretations of these words, Invasive provokes the audience to think about the future of scientific language and the role of technology in creating or destroying the barriers between understanding, empathy and emotional connection.

Invasive is a collaboration between Geraint Rhys Whittaker and Arlie McCarthy.

Geraint Rhys Whittaker is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher from Wales, working out of Oldenburg, Germany. His work combines music, film and sound to explore various ways of storytelling, and is currently working on ocean-related art-science collaborations.

Arlie McCarthy is a marine ecologist from Australia and now based in Oldenburg, Germany. She studies non-native species, focusing on the critters that grow on ships’ hulls, and the risks they pose to Antarctic environments.

Sea and Brittle Stars (Last Refuge)

The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is warming faster than the rest of the planet, causing the rise of global sea levels, changes in ocean currents and a decline in the availability of marine living resource.The Weddell Sea is considered one of the last refuges for many marine species dependent upon cold, pristine waters for survival. It is imperative that the region gain the status of a marine protected area (MPA) to try to mitigate the consequences of climate change and prevent future expansion of fishing in this area. However, some countries that are part of the Antarctic Treaty still withhold their support for MPAs due to their geopolitical and commercial interests, thereby failing to secure the safety of this unique and increasingly fragile habitat.

The music in this work is born from a dataset of 180 benthic species (creatures that dwell on the seafloor) whose presence and absence were recorded in the Weddell Sea between 1983 and 2011. The data and accompanying imagery, processed through the artist’s electronic palette, speaks to the mystery and vulnerability of this precious territory, the last refuge.

Sea and Brittle Stars (Last Refuge) is a collaboration between Michael Begg, Katharina Teschke and Flavia Bellotto Trigo.

Michael Begg is an award-winning experimental composer and sound artist based in Scotland. In 2024 he was the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute’s musician in residence in Antarctica. From 2022-23, he was composer in residence with the European Marine Board. His development of data sonification and composition tools and processes is recognised as an action with the EU Mission: Restore Our Oceans and Waters

Katharina Teschke is a marine ecologist from Germany. She specialises in marine spatial planning in the Southern Ocean. She works with German ministries to translate scientific findings into policy and is leading the proposal for the Weddell Sea Marine Protected Area Phase 1 for the German delegation to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

Flavia Bellotto Trigo is an ecologist from Brazil, now based in Oldenburg, Germany. She is supporting the establishment of the Weddell Sea Marine Protected Area Phase 1 by curating and analysing biodiversity data to identify priority areas for protection.

Theater of Enforcement at Sea

The sea is peopled, with fish and fishers, ancestors and beliefs, rights and duties. Traditional Indigenous maritime territories and fishing practices are coming under the assault of modern fisheries laws and militarized enforcement supporting coastal development and industrial-scale fishing. Juxtaposing Indigenous cosmologies, immersive aquatic images, and creative performances, Theatre of Enforcement at Sea invites the audience to reflect on the meaning of the sea and the primacy of Indigenous maritime tenure and fishing rights.

Theater of Enforcement at Sea was collectively produced by the Pulowi Assembly, an interdisciplinary group of art, anthropology, biology, geography, and political ecology practitioners and researchers formed through participation in the Submersive Atmospheres project.

The group consists of Paula Satizábal (Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Germany); Dawn Roe (Professor of Art, Rollins College, U.S.A.); Andrés Romero (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rollins College, U.S.A); Gina Noriega Narváez and Lina M. Saavedra-Diaz (Research Group on Socio-ecological Systems for Human Wellbeing, Colombia); and Philippe Le Billon (University of British Columbia, Canada).

Unravelling the Threads

Unravelling The Threads combines rhizomatic sculptural fragments of the complex and dynamic networks of marine food webs, constituted by predator-prey interspecies relationships, with sonifications of Lotka-Volterra equations, simulations of population dynamics described by Generalized Modeling of ecological networks, and identified network motifs such as Omnivory, TreeChain, and Apparent Competition.

Unravelling the Threads is a collaboration between Hugsten and Melanie Habermann.

Annsofie Jonsson (Hugsten) is a Berlin-based Swedish artist and a member of the art collective Studio Baustelle. Her work revolves around expressive semi-abstract paintings using collage techniques and mixed media and she often takes inspiration from the hypnagogic state of mind. She studied fine art before obtaining a Master’s degree in Education, in the field of Culture, Media, and Aesthetics at the University of Malmö, Sweden.

Håkan Jonsson (Hugsten) is a sound artist and electroacoustic tinkerer in Berlin with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Trained oboist. Member of the Studio Baustelle artist collective. His field recording works focus on giving voice to entities that have none, e.g. hospital patients, trees, marine species, the dead, and rural craftspeople.

Melanie Habermann is a PhD student at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity. Her work is focused on the stability and reactivity of food webs and development of new approaches to study the dynamics of ecological systems.

A choir of perspectives

Climate change is altering our world and our oceans as we know them. Many sensitive ecosystems are already affected and call on us humans to take action. It is time to change our image of being the negative key drivers to being also the driving part of the solution. This artistic-scientific collaboration aims to draw attention to the fact that many humans and other organisms are affected, but have different needs and perspectives that must be heard. This choir of perspectives can be powerful, and the sharing of knowledge and resources offers the opportunity to reach a new level of ocean governance and global management that is much better than today.

A Choir of Perspectives is a collaboration between Miguel Chaparro and Laura Niemeyer.

Miguel Chaparro is an artist based in Bremen, who deconstructs and decodes to create new environments, using
sound and image through immersive binding and resignifying processes. He is interested in the relationship that
nature and artefacts produce in humans and how this relationship can change the perception of space, time and
meaning from collective or individual experiences. Miguel is studying for a Digital Media Master of Arts at
Hochschule für Künste (HFK) Bremen, Germany.

Laura Niemeyer is a marine social scientist based in Bremen. She is interested in marine governance, science
communications and almost everything related to the ocean and the protection of its inhabitants. Currently, she
works in public relations for a climate protection agency in Bremen.

Obscura: The sound of the Anthropocene in the inaesthetic world

Sound occupies private and public spaces. However, there is a sound we rarely hear in everyday life: seafloor sound. This underwater sound is situated in deep spaces. So, why does thinking with the seafloor sound matter? This is because the seafloor sound is a primary indicator to find a sparse element, so-called tin ores, beneath the seabed. As tin ores are a critical metal for electronic devices and automobile manufacturers, the seafloor sound is, thus, the bedrock of our modern infrastructure. In this way, this sonic wave mediates our unexpected ecological relation with such a distant yet intimate place, the ocean-floor.

Obscura: The sound of the Anthropocene in the inaesthetic world is a collaboration between Gardika Gigih and Merdeka Agus Saputra.

Gardika Gigih is an Indonesian composer, pianist, and soundscape researcher. He has a deep interest in contemporary music expressions inspired by local traditions in Southeast Asia. In 2019, Gigih conducted soundscape research as cultural narratives in Southeast Asia and Japan, supported by The Japan Foundation (visit: https://lostinsound.art/). In 2023, as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow (ACC), he stayed in New York to study multicultural collaborations. He is continuing to compose music inspired by his global interest.

Merdeka Argus Saputra is an interdisciplinary human geographer. Trained in marine biology, marine governance (environmental policy), and human geography, he has worked across diverse governance of maritime sectors such as aquaculture, fisheries, seabed mining, and undersea cables. His interest primarily lies in how the intersection between (western) science, technology, and politics has (re)created and enacted particular dominant imagination spaces (e.g., land, sea, and seafloor) and who and what benefits from this spatial imagination and why.

Vanishing Traces: A Song of Seaweeds

A dive into the mysterious and vanishing genetic worlds of seaweeds, this sound and visual work takes the listener/viewer into visible and invisible seaweed pathways. Moving through audio and visual layers from above the ocean, to its surface and below. We shift from the almost singularly cultivated species that is farmed around the globe, to the wild, lesser-known types, and into the microscopic and genetic tracings of seaweeds and the pathogens feeding on this unique species. The composed musical world is a response to, and interpretation of, these beautiful seaweeds and the epiphytes that are impeding them. The music is composed partly by re-interpreting the genetic samples and codings, sonically and in graphic music notations.

“We are [a] land species and what we usually see is the surface. But diving into and discovering all these organisms and habitats” beneath the surface opens us to invisible and vanishing worlds.

Vanishing Traces: A Song of Seaweeds is a collaboration between Elisa Goodrich and Janina Brakel.

Elissa Goodrich is a Sound artist, composer and percussionist. Elissa Goodrich’s works play in festivals across Europe, North America, Australasia, and in international audio-visual collaborations. Since 2015 Elissa’s practice includes collaborating at intersections of climate science and new music, including Elissa’s current The Waves Project in partnership with ‘Surf Sounds’ scientific team (Swinburne / University of Melbourne, Australia).

Janina Brakel is a marine molecular ecologist from Germany. She studies patterns of cryptic diversity and distribution of domesticated and non-domesticated seaweeds through sequence data.

Algae Blooms

As the seas heat up, phytoplankton algae from temperate climates migrate north, towards the Arctic. Here, the algae have adapted to Arctic conditions, extremes of cold and light and dark. How do the temperate algae adapt to this environment? And what does it mean for them all that the seas are getting warmer?

Algae Blooms explores this scenario through an Arctic and temperate algae duet. These algae sing together and to each other about their biology and their experience as their world transforms around them and their normal processes are challenged and eventually break down.

Phytoplankton algae are the base of the ocean food chain. Through photosynthesis they create the oxygen we breathe, and with their sedimentation to the seafloor they sequester carbon which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. Algae Blooms explores algae’s connection to everything else, and imagines what might happen if the delicate balance of their ecosystem breaks down.

Algae Blooms is a collaboration between Isabella Martin and Avril von Hoyningen-Huene.

Isabella Martin is a visual artist from England, now based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her multidisciplinary work utilises embodied and scientific knowledge to explore the relationship between our bodies and our environment, with a current focus on the body’s internal rhythms and oceanic time.

Avril von Hoyningen-Huene is a microbial ecologist from Germany. She studies how phytoplankton algae from temperate waters cope with Arctic conditions, and whether they are able to compete with Arctic algae in light of climate change.