O-TŪ-KAPUA | My Personal Cloud

Be part of an exciting collaboration where artists and scientists have come together to make the invisible visible creating a visual and virtual forest for you to decorate with Waitakere birds and insects. Working with information from NIWA scientists and the creative team, F4 contribute ideas in a workshop investigating climate change while combining art and science to make a unique, bird or insect to exhibit in our Learning Centre Gallery. This is the second stage of an innovative, ongoing project called TEMP air where an App has been developed for you to use on your phone so you can also view the exhibition in virtual space. (Yrs. 4-8, science, technology, english, maths, and art) Visit http://www.teuru.org.nz/index.cfm/learn/school-programmes/ to organise a school booking

Children influence the behaviours of others around them, particularly their parents and siblings; projects that aim to empower young people in the context of climate change can have significant benefits for society. To achieve long term attitudinal changes, pedagogically derived platforms are needed which enable children to understand their power to act, enabling young people to demonstrate their personal leadership qualities now and in the future.

O-Tū-Kapua brings artists, scientists, designers, educators and young people together in a meaningful and practical art-based educational endeavour around climate science. With the goal to make visible what is invisible, raise awareness and engage children in conversations about atmospheric science. Using our different senses, such as smell, taste and touch and looking at microscopic worlds, the atmosphere was linked to the children’s life experiences.

O-Tū-Kapua consists of three phases woven together:

Phase 1 (May – June 2016):
My Personal Cloud , offered an imaginative re interpretation of the observable world. My Personal Cloud was created from an array of collaborative events orchestrated by Artist Collective F4 and NIWA. These elements were then brought together to create an installation at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi, West Auckland, New Zealand.

The distinct elements in this participatory project included;
  ●   A waiata (song) (SoundCloud) recorded by the Play it Strange Jam Bus
  ●   Art+Science hands-on making + My Personal Cloud installation
  ●   One-second videos of the children with their Clouds

Phase 2 (October – December 2016):

AirScience Pilot – making connections, linking the students’ perceptions about the air and the sky to atmospheric and climate change science and how their perceptions can inform, and be informed by data.

Phase 3 (16 March – 9 April 2017 @ Te Uru Waitakere Art Gallery):

Art + Science + Education + Technology = the Temp-air Mixed-Reality Experience

Leveraging educational strategies that combine: Immersive learning, making, questioning, experiencing, breaking, re-imagining. The O-Tū-Kapua mixed reality experience will engage children and their parents/community in a sensorial/emotional landscape.

Team
Sue Jowsey, Marcus Williams, Mercy Williams – F4 Collective
Gustavo Olivares, Guy Coulson, Elizabeth Somervell, Ian Longley – NIWA
Claudio Aguayo, James Smith, Maree Sheehan – Auckland University of Technology

Students & Graduate Assistants
Shaun Goddard & Molly Wilson – UNITEC NZ
Olivia Boyle – Auckland University of Technology

Partners
Prospect Primary School & Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Hoani Waititi – Glen Eden
Jon Lowther & Roy Davies – Imersia
Andrew Clifford, Iona Matheson & Education Team – Te Uru Waitakere Art Gallery

F4 collective led by Marcus Williams Susan Jowsey
Life and art merge with this experimental collective: a family live and make art together, exploring the dynamics of familial structures, collective memory and interpersonal relationships. Growing from the long-term artistic collaboration between parents (Susan Jowsey and Marcus Williams) F4 is a conceptual and structural response to their children entering into and altering this partnership.

Marcus Williams is Dean of Research at Unitec; a practicing  artist and founding member of the F4 Collective. Marcus has a cross-disciplinary art practice working in a wide range of media with a strong emphasis in photography. He makes artist’s books, video’s, photographic prints and Internet projects often combining these strategies into ‘total installations’. He has an enduring interest in collaboration and has collaborated with a wide range of artists in New Zealand and in Europe. Marcus has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Australia, UK, US, France, Italy, Austria, Estonia and Russia.

Susan Jowsey is a multimedia artist working with 3D objects, digital sculpture and animation, installation, moving image and photography. She lives in New Zealand but exhibits internationally. Her work is held in major collections throughout New Zealand. Jowsey’s work has a strong visual aesthetic, drawing predominantly on the abject and found objects of domestic origin. Jowsey traces with her fingers a map of dislocation, in an exploration of identity, the fabric of habit, trace and breath and the clothes of the senses.

Mercy Alberta Williams is a Year 12 student in the Rumaki at Nga Puna o Waiorea, Western Springs College. She is an award winning bilingual songwriter and will write and direct the performance of the climate change waiata for the Personal Cloud installation at Te Uru Gallery.

NIWA Air Quality Scientists
Gustavo Olivares is an air quality scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). Originally from Santiago (Chile), his background is in chemical engineering, with an early interest in air pollution and urban environments. Recent projects have dealt with the characterisation of aerosols from urban traffic and heating sources, developing low-cost instrumentation to empower communities and developing an integrated tool to evaluate the air quality outcomes of urban development.

Dr Guy Coulson is the NIWA Science Leader for air quality research. Guy has a PhD in atmospheric chemistry from the University of Essex and worked as a researcher at the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Essex and as a consultant at Cambridge Consultants.

Dr Ian Longley leads the Atmospheric Environment, Health and Society programme. He has worked in air quality research at NIWA since 2007 before which he conducted research in aerosol micrometeorology at the University of Manchester. Ian is a specialist in air pollution exposure science and the air quality impact of the built environment.

Dr Elizabeth Somervell is an air quality scientist at NIWA. Her PhD is in Urban Air Quality, Elizabeth is currently working as an air quality modeller, with experience in urban micrometeorology, air pollution exposure science,  air quality impacts of vehicle emissions, air quality field observations and air quality impact assessment.

Dr Claudio Aguayo is a Research Officer at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Auckland University of Technology. Claudio has a PhD in Education from the University of Waikato and a BSC in Biology, he is actively engaged in learning technologies, mobile learning, social media, online collaborative spaces, educational app development, education for sustainability, and community education. Claudio will lead the TEMP-air app team.

James Smith is a Communication Design tutor at Auckland University of Technology. James has been a Digital Media Producer for the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Auckland University of Technology, his research centres on designing virtual and augmented reality experience. James was the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship for Postgraduate Study at AUT and is a member of the TEMP-air app team.

Social Media
Twitter + Instagram: @OTuKapua / #OTuKapua