Circulating Images: From Aotearoa to Shanghai

In May 2007, three artists from Aotearoa (the Maori designation for New Zealand) exhibited Geomatics and Ecomatics: Three Stories at the Shanghai International Science and Art Exhibition. The project included three works: Cloud Shape Classifier, an interactive, Web-based installation by Wellington artist Douglas Bagnall; Uncle Tasman: The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth, a three-channel video installation by Ngati Porou artist Natalie Robertson; and my work, Remote Senses: Storms Nearby, an installation with multiple round projection screens. The land and sky have historically been artists´ subject matter. Although the understanding of nature as a stable, hermetic category has been abandoned, the subject of the environment is returning to art discourse. Particularly in new media art, the flexibility of data allows for new modes of representing natural phenomena as visualizations and sonifications.