Glacier tracer

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'Glacier Tracer' began with a six-week Creative New Zealand and Department of Conservation Wild Creations artist in residence award ($7000) at Fox Glacier in 2010. The researcher-artist made a series of drawings and video projects and ran Global Positioning System (GPS) drawing workshops, work documented in 'Land. Here.' (2012 ISBN: 978-0-473-23541-3) a 48-page publication with introductory essay by Oxford University geographer Joe Gerlach. Influenced by the critical cartographic writings on John Fels and Dennis Wood, the work explored a space between mapping's processes of abstraction and how maps are put to use in lived experience; a process of being drawn into the landscape. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Glacier Tracer' reconstructs five walks on Fox Glacier, all of which were recorded on a GPS device. The research produces new knowledge by 'setting the immanence and immediacy of GPS traces amongst the protracted millennial lurch and flow of glaciers' (Gerlach). The act of drawing the routes (across the Glacier) conflated scales of experiential, bodily and cartographic where walking becomes digital code becomes drawing becomes moving image. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: 'Glacier Tracer's multiple iterations at local and international levels demonstrate the signifiance and innovation of the work. It was funded by a Creative NZ residency (2010). In 2011, the International Cartographic Association working group on Arts & Cartography invited the researcher to give a guest lecture on the project ('Land.Here. A Subjective Carotgraphy of Fox Glacier') at the Mapping Processes and Practices: Arts, Maps and Society conference in Paris. The researcher gave a public talk on 'Glacier Mapping' at ASCUS Art Science Collaborative in Edinburgh. In 2012, 'Glacier Tracer' was selected for a curated group show at The Lock-Up , Newcastle,a leading art gallery and museum funded by the NSW Government, the Newcastle City Council, Arts NSW and the University of Newcastle.