Transdisciplinarity in the Dunedin Art+Science Project

In confronting the realities of the global climate crisis, it seems as if we are living in a narrow window of “useful consciousness.” Responding to and tackling the existential threat of the climate crisis requires transdisciplinary methodologies and cooperation. A series of multidiscipline art and science collaborations in Dunedin, New Zealand, focuses a lens on rapidly changing ecological and social effects as human activity encroaches on our planetary boundaries. Our approach allows for processing of the scientific data in bite-sized, digestible chunks and provides a means for storytelling through visual texts and narrative spaces – a methodology essential to connecting with community values and finding solutions to climate anxieties

Art-Science Collaboration: Blending the Boundaries of Practice

The Art + Oceans Project was the sixth in the ongoing ‘Art + Science’  Project series, where artists collaborate with scientists individually, or in pairs, to develop artworks for public exhibition relating to science interpreted in a broad context.In Art + Oceans, collaborators tackled the complexities of our changing marine environment; working together over several months (from October 2017 to July 2018), they produced many generative interactions between art and science. The large group exhibition (held in the Otago Museum’s HD Skinner Annex, 23 July–5 August 2018) represented 26 collaborations between artists (including graduates, staff and senior students of the Dunedin School of Art and the School of Design at Otago Polytechnic) and scientists (from University of Otago science departments including Surveying, Physics, Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, Marine Science, Physical Education and Science Communication; as well as the University of British Columbia; the Cawthron Institute; LandcareResearch; the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA); and research collectives including Coastal Acidification: Rate, Impacts & Management (CARIM) and the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge)

Where’s the Switch?

Sex change occurs as a usual part of the life cycle for many ray-finned fish, often following specific social cues. It has been shown that environmental factors can interact with, and sometimes override,genetic factors to control sexual development. More dramatically, in many marine fish, individuals can change sex as an adaptive response to environmental changes even during adulthood. Such sensitivity to environmental stimuli may explain why teleost or bony fishes display such highly diverse sex determination and developmental systems, which make them good models for understanding vertebrate sexual development. The exact mechanism behind the transduction of the environmental signals into the molecular cascade that underlies this singular transformation remains largely unknown. Cortisol is the main glucocorticoid in fish and the hormone most directly associated with stress. However, the exact role of cortisol or stress in transducing the external signals to elicit physiological responses during sexual development and sex change remains a mystery

On Caustics: A Conversation

In which an Artist preserves the tenor of conversations with a Physicist: Lessons on the behaviour of Caustics. A collagoration of artistic experiments to create light artifacts captured on a light sensor, informed by the scientific emanations of a consulting physicist

Wāhine Māori Reflections on Wai

Introduction to four case studies:As Māori we are strongly connected to the ocean and to the water. These connections form the fabric of who we are and of our identity. As we age and mature, the nature of our relationship to the water changes as well. In this series of papers, we will share some of our insights and reflectionsabout being wāhine Māori today and the connections of indigenous identity to the ocean, to water and to the world in general. We are four researchers from Te Koronga, a Māori research excellence kaupapa based at the University of Otago. Tēnei mātou te koronga.