Climate change is here…
NARRATION
Something has changed too, for the Tuart trees. At Lake Clifton, south of Perth, their twisted skeletons rise through the peppermint groves. These ones died in the 1990s. In other areas, they are failing to fruit, and the species’ seed bank is drastically declining.
Prof Giles Hardy
Again, we don’t fully understand what’s driving these declines, but in some areas we’re losing a hundred per cent of the trees.
NARRATION
Despite many different ailments, there is one obvious common stressor that could explain why so many trees are dying. They are facing higher temperatures with less water. The south-west of Western Australia has lost fifteen per cent of its rainfall in the past few decades. Average temperatures have increased by just over half a degree Celsius. Heatwaves have become longer, more frequent, and more intense.
Prof Giles Hardy
We haven’t seen such scale of damage in the last fifty, sixty years, probably in recorded history.
…
Dr Craig Allen
What’s most alarming is that these die-off events may be just the tip of the iceberg. We know that warming, temperatures exacerbate tree mortality, and the climate predictions are that the world is going to get much warmer soon. Um, so we may be just at the very front edge of what could be wholesale mortality of the world’s forests – the forests that we know and care about today.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3488105.htm
Currently working with audio/visual/performance technical expert Simon Wise to create a 5.5 m x 5.5 m grid of spatial sound. Cusp is an indoor spatial sound piece as part of The Sixth Shore project. We needed a big space and were very lucky to secure a pop-up artist in residence at the blend(er) gallery in Joondalup.
Also on display are some work in progress drawings and prints and a sample of some sound art walking — ideas and media that I am exploring as part of The Sixth Shore. If you are nearby then pop in for a look at blend(er) Tuesday through to Friday, from 10am to 2pm until Friday 4 May.
(or join us at 10am Friday 27 April for morning tea for an informal talk about the project and artworks).
CUsp is gallery-based spatial sound work. Sound will move through different speakers in a sequence similar to the way waves come up a beach before washing back out into the sea. It will be exhibited in Adaptation (6 May to 10 June at INQB8).
INQB8.mandurah Centre for Contemporary Art
63 Ormsby Terrace
Mandurah, Western Australia
Exhibition opening and talks: 4:30 to 7:00 pm Sunday 6 May
Open on the Stretch Festival weekend 5 and 6 May (12.00 noon to 4.00 pm) and then
Wednesday to Sunday 12.00 noon to 4.00 pm Thursday 12.00 noon to 6.00pm.
Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy…if we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health
1969 Brown & Williamson (B&W) document http://tobaccodocuments.org/landman/332506.html
Forest walking is better for your health than urban walking for cardiovascular and metabolic health according to Japanese research http://www.hphpcentral.com/article/where-you-walk-matters
Original Paper: Qing Li; Toshiaki Otsuka; Maiko Kobayashi; Yoko Wakayama; Hirofumi Inagaki; Masao Katsumata; Yukiyo Hirata; YingJi Li; Kimiko Hirata; Takako Shimizu; Hiroko Suzuki; Tomoyuki Kawada; Takahide Kagawa Acute effects of walking in forest environments on cardiovascular and metabolic parameters European Journal of Applied Physiology (November 2011), 111 (11), pg. 2845-2853
The short segment Permeate (part of Off Track) produced by Miyuki Jokiranta features an interview with Perdita Phillips about walking and sound in her practice. It includes narrative extracts from the sound walk To Meander and Back.
You can listen to it here http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/permeate3a-perdita-phillips/3932726 (download might possibly be restricted to Australian isp addresses).
The sound art walking work continues with The Sxith Shore and with the up-coming cusp.
Currently working with audio/visual/performance technical expert Simon Wise to create a 4.5 m x 4.5 m grid of spatial sound. Cusp is an indoor spatial sound piece as part of The Sixth Shore project.
Explanation for the formation of beach cusps remains inconclusive and may involve the formation of standing edge waves or alternatively can be understood as a paradigm of self organisation, where positive feedback between the morphology of the beach and the flow of the water, create slight height differences that reinforce themselves.
Beach cusps are self organising once they form and continue until wave energy conditions change. They can be seen as analogies for how we can re-evaluate and reset our environmental and cultural priorities.
In this gallery-based work, sound moves through different speakers in a sequence similar to the way waves come up a beach before washing back out into the sea. It will be exhibited in Adaptation (6 May to 10 June at INQB8).
INQB8.mandurah Centre for Contemporary Art
63 Ormsby Terrace
Mandurah, Western Australia
Exhibition opening and talks: 4:30 to 7:00 pm Sunday 6 May
Open on the Stretch Festival weekend 5 and 6 May (12.00 noon to 4.00 pm) and then
Wednesday to Sunday 12.00 noon to 4.00 pm Thursday 12.00 noon to 6.00pm.
With thanks to Simon Wise and Michelle Outram for loan of some vital equipment!
Professor John A Endler’s recent bowerbird research about male bowerbirds using forced perspective to make their displays more speccy has been reported in Science Daily. Basically they arrange larger objects
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100909122801.htm
The original article: John A. Endler, Lorna C. Endler, and Natalie R. Doerr. Great Bowerbirds Create Theaters with Forced Perspective When Seen by Their Audience. Current Biology, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.08.033
This is not Endler’s work but an interaction I did with bowerbirds at Broome Bird Observatory
from Type Books, Toronto
situation awareness
quangic realignment
Resilient
buffering
safe to fail
cross-scale interactions
Arts industry statistics from the Australia Council. Is art more like religion or a gambling addiction?
Lethologica Press is please to announce that we are well on the way to exhibiting a diverse range of collaborative art/text books in November at the Perth Centre for Photography. Current participants include Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Denise Brown, Nandi Chinna, Thea Costantino, Liana Joy Christensen, Emmanuela Dos Santos Dias, Vivienne Glance, Marie Lochman, Eric James Mitchell, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Perdita Phillips, Gail Robinson, Flavio Rosa, Dianne and Kathryn Souphandavong and Andrea Smith.
Submit your book: if you have a recently produced book and want to exhibit it contact teapot@lethologicapress.org ASAP. Tell us about your book by filling in the submission form and emailing it to teapot@lethologicapress.org ASAP.
Submit your book by 31 January to:
Western Australian Photographic Book Showcase + Art/Text/Clearinghouse Project
Fitzgerald Photo Imaging
350 Fitzgerald Street
NORTH PERTH WA 6006
Make sure you include a copy of the submission form with your book.
If you can’t make the deadline contact teapot@lethologicapress.org to make alternative arrangements. Books can be mailed to Lethologica Press with return postage included.
Proposed exhibition dates: 9 February to 10 March 2012
What kind of books are accepted?
The types of texts accepted include all forms of contemporary literature including nonfiction, fiction and poetry and also critical essays and theoretical texts. Books can even include forewords by a second person!
Cost of submission = $60 per title. This money goes to paying for the gallery hire, marketing and catering.
We will feature your exhibited books on the Lethologica Press website with a link to your own website.
Sales: From 10 February 2012 to 11 March 2013 we offer to host sales of your book through the Lethologica Press website either by linking to the sales area of your website (more convenient for you) or by utilising a paypal plugin we have installed on our website.
Check out the art/text/clearinghouse FAQs here http://www.lethologicapress.org/teapot/?page_id=131
Time is running out for WA photographers to exhibit their photographic books in a curated exhibition at the Perth Centre for Photography.
Submit your book: Lethologica Press are looking for photographic books (including small pamphlets) that are:
for inclusion in the Western Australian Photographic Book Showcase. Books do not necessarily need to be published by established publishers — they can be self-published.
We wish to document the historical development of photographic books in Western Australia and we are aware that many photographers these days are utilising recent developments in digitally printed and Print On Demand services to produce professional portfolios and short-run books.
Tell us about your book by filling in the submission form and emailing it to teapot@lethologicapress.org ASAP.
Submit your book by 31 January to:
Western Australian Photographic Book Showcase + Art/Text/Clearinghouse Project
Fitzgerald Photo Imaging
350 Fitzgerald Street
NORTH PERTH WA 6006
Make sure you include a copy of the submission submission form with your book.
If you can’t make the deadline contact teapot@lethologicapress.org to make alternative arrangements. Books can be mailed to Lethologica Press with return postage included.
Proposed exhibition dates: 9 February to 10 March 2012
Cost of submission = $30 for up to 3 titles. This money goes to paying for the gallery hire, marketing and catering.
We will feature your exhibited books on the Lethologica Press website with a link to your own website.
Check out the FAQs here http://www.lethologicapress.org/teapot/?page_id=124
A short snippet of this extensive audio-video installation by Saba Skabern called Conversation with the Ancestors.

Saba Slakabern at Novo Mesto, Slovenija (studio shots of works being prepared)
Above is one of the works being prepared in the studio but check out the visualisation here of the entire show http://virtualen.si/demo/Saba_3D/virtualen.si_Pogovor_s_predniki.html. Saba collaborated with Saska Sagadin so there is a sound component to the piece as well which we unfortunately can’t experience.
Check out the website and project for What is missing? by Maya Lin http://www.whatismissing.net/ (also see details on her website http://www.mayalin.com/). I’m always a little dubious about mournful environmental art but the website is very moving in an informational sort of way.
Someone has uploaded and extract of Marcus Coates’ Dawn Chorus online.
Here is a baltic bites about it
The Australian, Weekend Review, August 13-14, p. 4
Was surprised to read that according to Jane “when Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991 it threw out more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire time on earth”. Googled this phrase and its part of a climate denying email going around.
Do volcanos emit more CO2 than human induced causes? No. “Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).” http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
Pinatubo did have a measurable effect on global climate temperatures through SO2 emissions. “The Pinatubo cloud was the largest sulfur dioxide cloud ever observed in the stratosphere since the beginning of such observations by satellites in 1978. It caused what is believed to be the largest aerosol disturbance of the stratosphere in the twentieth century, though probably smaller than the disturbances from eruptions of Krakatau in 1883 and Tambora in 1815. Consequently, it was a standout in its climate impact and cooled the Earth’s surface for three years following the eruption, by as much as 1.3 degrees at the height of the impact. ” http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
In effect Pinatubo did cause a dip in the overall trend for increasing global temperatures. Regrettably, volcanic eruptions with SO2 emissions of the size of Pinatubo are not common.
see also article here http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf
You can see a longer analysis of Jane Fraser’s piece here http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/the_australians_war_on_science_71.php
Friedlingstein, P., Houghton, R. A., Marland, G., Hackler, J., Boden, T. A., Conway, T. J., Canadell, J. G., Raupach, M. R., Ciais, P., and Le Quéré, C., 2010, Update on CO2 emissions, Nat. Geosci., v. 3, n. 12, p. 811–812, doi:10.1038/ngeo1022.
Gerlach, T.M., 2011, Volcanic versus anthropogenic carbon dioxide: Eos Trans. AGU, v. 92, n. 24, p. 201-202. (http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf)
…”You are entitled to your own opinions — but not your own facts”