This artwork is a digital animation derived from one of two semi-permanent time-lapse cameras installed at Mawson Station in Antarctica. The thousands of resulting photographs are chronologically ordered, computationally sliced and recombined, to create a series of frames that each derive from 640 individual time-lapse images.
Each frame of the animation shows a duration of 26.66 hours across its horizontal dimension, and the play back of the full animation covers an original period of 60 days, from December 8th 2017 to February 5th 2018.
The red and blue points are derived from Bureau of Meteorology data recorded at Mawson during that period. The red dots are air temperature samples and their values range from -6 Celcius at the bottom of the frame to +6 Celcius at the top. The position of the horizon in the image represents 0 degrees Celcius.
The blue dots are wind speed in kilometres per hour. Their values range in scale from 0 kmph at the bottom of the frame to 160 kmph at the top. The position of the horizon in the image represents 80 kmph.
The ticks across the bottom of the frame represent noon (light-blue), midnight (dark-blue), whilst dawn and dusk appear orange.
Martin Walch is a Tasmanian artist who works across a range of media including photography, video, computer programming and data visualisation. From 2011-2017 he was involved in a major collaboration on The Derwent Project with photographer David Stephenson, which secured ARC Discovery Project funding from 2014-2016. Most recently Walch has returned from Mawson Station in Eastern Antarctica, where he was the 2017 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellow. Martin lives and works in Hobart where he coordinates the Photography program at the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania.
Australian Antarctic Division & University of Tasmania.