Deception I - Berlin 2017

Runtime Video 01:00 sec looped

Runtime Sound 03:00 sec

Sound by Maria Alfonsine

Canon G5, Icodis pico CB 300 projector, Canon EOS 5d MKIII, Zoom H6 recorder,Voice and body sounds recorded with Rode NT2A microphone, sampler instrument is built in Logic Pro X EXS24

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Projection of Berlin street scene onto melting glacier Deception Island, South Shetlands Islands, Antarctica

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Deception I Berlin (part of a series of video works) look to explore the role of contemporary society in Global warming and how remote places are being affected, it is not just our impact from a distance that is explored but our very presence in the eco system.  This work shows a 1 min loop of video footage filmed in Berlin that is looped to a 3 min section of sound.  This sound was created by sound artist Maria Alfonsine using sounds recorded by me onsite in Deception Island as well as body percussion to expand on the rhythm of the street sounds especially the pedestrian crossing beat.

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Berlin with its drive to reverse the impact we are having on the biosphere seemed to be the ideal place to begin.  Videoing the street scene of the everyday person going about their life, I have then taken these images projected it onto melting glacier on Deception Island in Antarctica, bringing the first world to what it cannot see exposing the pristine (?) to a window of our fast changing world. With its interdisciplinary ecocritical vision this work traverses the traditionally held disciplinary boundaries between the sciences and the humanities. 

This work is about deception, not just the name of place but of the way we as a society use deception to not see what we know to be true. 

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The deception of our governments in not taking strong and immediate action. 

The deception of the oil industry in working to create atrophy about the larger picture of its practices.

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Deception is just one part of a dialogue a discussion, to create further awareness around how society’s actions have a ‘butterfly effect’ on such a remote, utopian destination. A place that one would have thought unaffected by our society but through this work I show how we are effecting and affecting Deception Island, which by its isolation, its surrounding waters, it and its wildlife remain virtually invisible to our world.