Close Look Distant View

Close Look, Distant View

Close Look, Distant View was a two-day symposium that examined new research and shifting perceptions of watery landscapes in art, science, digital technology and the environment. It was organised by Dr Jane Watt and Dr Susan Barnet (both School of Engineering, Arts, Science and Technology, University of Suffolk) in collaboration with Emma Roodhouse (Colchester and Ipswich Museums) and in partnership with The Hold Suffolk Archives. It coincided with the Landscape Rebels exhibition at Christchurch Mansion and Suffolk’s Green Story exhibition at The Hold, Ipswich.

Day 1: Symposium 2.3.2023

The first day symposium public event at The Hold, Ipswich with nearly one hundred attendees included presentations by researchers from University of Suffolk, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Southampton, California Institute of Technology and Tate. These included discussion around lost waterscapes, visualizing climate change, the politics and history of landscape.

Symposium Presentations

Dr Amy Concannon

RAIN, STEAM AND SPEED: JMW TURNER’S ATMOSPHERIC SUBLIME
This talk travels with Turner across rivers, seas and through the air. These were the sites where industrialisation and technological revolution wrought dramatic changes that Turner, the eyes of his time, committed to canvas. Here was an artist who loved trains and steam ships. But do his depictions of them capture a sense that speed wasn’t everything and might come at a cost?
Professor Nic Bury

GHOSTLY PONDS - RESURRECTING THE PAST TO HELP CONSERVE EAST ANGLIAN BIODIVERSITY
Within East Anglia the shift in agricultural practices has seen larger and larger farms with arable land devoted to the monoculture of plants. We have lost the mosaic of fields that would have been separated by hawthorn hedges and contained ponds to allow access to water for cattle providing a diverse habitat. These ponds were filled in for agricultural land reclamations and many have thus disappeared from our landscape. These are the Ghost Ponds.
Dr Felicity Hammond

POWER SURGE: IN DEFENCE OF RISING WATER
Power Surge: In defence of rising sea levels is an artistic practice-based research project that asks us to reflect on the interaction of water with the built environment. It explores the contradictions in contemporary building projects, where buildings sold on their proximity to water will eventually be consumed by it. If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at its current pace, sea levels will rise 65 cm by 2100 - enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities.
Professor Darryl Newport

CAN YOU SEE IT YET? THE VALUE OF VISUALIZING EARTH’S ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE
Generally, suggestions are made that while people have a reasonable knowledge of climate change and the earth's environmental issues, the topic needs to be communicated in clear and meaningful ways avoiding jargon and technical language. This presentation highlights some of the visualisation techniques and asks the question how beneficial these types of visualisation tools are in demonstrating the importance of highlighting these environmental challenges and the benefit they have in changing behaviour to save the planet?
Emily Godden

REPRINTING THE LOST CITY VIA ARCHIVES AND MACHINE LEARNING
This research explores the story of Dunwich, the city that fell into the North Sea, through a series of practice-led investigations. The overarching narratives document the environmental heritage of Dunwich also known as the Lost City. Working with machine learning and text from W. G Sebald's Rings of Saturn a speculative utopian and dystopian vision of the Lost City is developed via print-based outputs.
Hillary Mushkin

GROUNDWATER
Groundwater, an art and research project, invites comparisons between historic, scientific, communal and personal perspectives of the loss of groundwater in California’s Central Valley. Based on collaboration with activists, scientists, artists and designers, Groundwater includes drawings, film, scientific visual ephemera and installation. This presentation offers past and present perspectives from space, the ground and underground. Together, these materials tell polyvocal stories situating the climate crisis as lived experience in California’s “land of milk and honey”.
Dr Susan Barnet & Dr Jane Watt

BLAST RADIUS: THE IMPACT OF A CREATIVE IMPULSE
The impetus for developing Blast Radius has come from an ongoing fascination with the fragile and hostile environment of Orford Ness on the East Anglian coast. As a former military test site evaluating explosions towards measuring the extent of destructive capacities, Blast Radius employs similar evaluative technologies but towards the creation of artworks and the assessment of a site’s ecology; the impact of a creative impulse.

Day 2: Challenge Lab 3.3.2023

The following day an invited group of twenty participants including artists, photographers, filmmakers, historians, architects, ecologists, and sociologists took part in a Challenge Lab on Orford Ness.

Following on from the first day’s activities in the traditional symposium format, in contrast, the Challenge Lab on Orford Ness had a very different, and more open-ended approach. We wanted to utilise the unfamiliarity and remoteness of the landscape of the Ness.

Although the Challenge Lab took place on the Ness, conceptions and formulations were not meant to be limited to this particular site, but instead emphasise future-looking intentions within a global perspective. We based the structure of the Challenge Lab on walking and moving through the site itself, punctuated by an audio-visual presentation by artist and film-maker Emily Richardson, informal talks by the Ness’ volunteer guides about their knowledge and experience of the history and ecology of the site, and sound participation led by oral historian and shanty aficionado JP.