Climate Emergency and the Next Generation

Our species and its cultures are at a crossroads in terms of the choices and outcomes related to greenhouse gas emissions and global heating, including the polar ice caps being entrained by, and into, the warming ocean. The impacts will extend far beyond sea level rise. Geophysical, ecological, political, economic, social and cultural consequences, some of which cannot be readily anticipated. How fast they will happen—decades and centuries into the future—depends on decisions made now and in the coming decade. Projections of surface temperature trajectories over the next 15 years suggest there is not a great deal to distinguish the acceptable outcomes from the poor-to-appalling trajectories (Boulton 2022). The topic is so pervasive that most audiences have ‘made up their mind’ about the issue, which means that even very clear messaging is unlikely to suddenly win people over regardless of their position. Thus, there is a significant potential benefit in diversifying how we communicate scientific knowledge about future climates and impacts.

Responses to climate are happening via a range of pathways—from the global multi-government IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) initiative (Lawrence et al. 2022) through to individual protests (Murphy 2021). Art is another such way of engaging with, understanding and interpreting our environment that can sometimes sidestep audience reticence. This chapter makes connections between science, art, climate and popular culture using educational, artistic and communication threads that have emerged in the long-standing collaboration between Antarctic scientists (including Stevens) and an artist (O’Connor). We first describe the nature of our art-science collaboration, which included: joint public and educational talks; O’Connor participating in science fieldwork and creating scientific data; scientists helping in (co-)creating art and activities, to enhance the connection between art and wider understandings of climate. We then use themes that emerge from popular movies both as a way of humanising climate research and as a gateway to representing ice and climate in art and science. Finally, in the discussion, we consider several questions that emerge from our own experiences: (a) What are the creative, aesthetic, visual art and socio-cultural results of science-art collaboration, and can science-based artistic communication be defined? (b) Can an aesthetic experience communicate research on ice and its crucial importance for our planet? (c) What role does science play in, and for, our socio-cultural ideas or imaginaries of ice?

Art-Science Collaboration

The collaboration central to this paper focused on developing an approach to communicating climate science by engaging young people in the art-making process. The initiative seeks to influence how the next generation view their choices, both in terms of education and the climate emergency. It results in cultural validation of outputs created for public exhibitions. This was built on a foundation of having the artist as an equal partner in the boots-on-ice science and conceiving of creativity as equally spread throughout the art-sciences. One of us (O’Connor) was embedded in the science—by participating in several Antarctic science ‘field events’—while at the same time developing her own art practice.

The ideas and thinking inherent in research need a genesis. O’Connor’s initial artworks were inspired by views out airplane windows flying over the ice-covered Arctic Ocean, as well as the cultural perspectives on the fate of the unretrieved remains of Scott and colleagues, who perished on the Ross Ice Shelf in the early 1900s (O’Connor 2011, Fig. 1). Objects frozen within ice shelves move based on a complex balance of the flow and stretching of the ice shelf itself (which can reach speeds of several metres a day), snow accreting from above and the ice melting or re-freezing from below. The idea that these explorers are posthumously continuing their journey, now with the aid of geophysical mechanics, inspired O’Connor’s What Lies Beneath (Fig. 1a) installation. This work consisted of a large three-dimensional representation of an ice shelf constructed from triangular panels of lacquered tissue paper dyed various shades of blue. While the work did not figuratively include the explorers, it did invoke their resting place within the three-dimensionality of an ice shelf viewed from below.

Fig. 1
2 photographs of ice-based creative work with paper and ice crystals.

Different scales of ice-focused art, (a) Gabby O’ Connor, the paper iceberg installation from What Lies Beneath, 2011, (b) a photograph of an ice crystal produced for both art and science, both © Gabby O’ Connor

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Publics often assign substantial value to the act of going to Antarctica. In our collaboration, the artist O’Connor prepared material for scientists to deploy in Antarctica (Stevens and O’Connor 2016), which led to her participating in research expeditions (O’Connor and Stevens 2018). Crucially, O’Connor contributed to the science by making detailed measurements of individual ice crystals, something that had never been done before. This involved developing a sampling, photographic and measurement protocol that extracted crystals from the underside of the sea ice (using a specially developed scoop) and then quickly moved them to the photographic stage before they melted or re-froze (Stevens et al. 2019). In addition, she documented both the art and science in unique ways, not normally captured by the science team’s processes; whereas the science team typically produced a time-stamped diary, O’Connor augmented this with videos, photographs and sketches of the day-to-day activity.

There is a substantial historical context for the intersection of art and science in an Antarctic setting (Stevens et al. 2019), with a range of impacts, from science and environmental communication to the values associated with art. Our collaboration also developed educational activities designed to engage young audiences with science, art and climate (O’Connor and Stevens 2015), which has had a significant impact (Lawrence et al. 2022). We developed workshops for school-aged students that simulated aspects of fieldwork, helped them make artworks and gave climate science social license. The initial school workshops were primarily about communicating climate science and the nature of creativity, although several additional themes quickly emerged, such as how using art as a gateway to science democratises science and learning. Some students think of themselves as not knowing anything about science, but they will happily help build a glacier artwork. With suitable tutoring, as they create they learn through discussion about ice mechanics, computer modelling, teamwork and oceanography. This of course requires skilled and knowledgeable tutors willing to present the science as accessible.

When looking at central themes for the future of our species like climate and ecosystem resilience, where long-term systems need to be supported by immediate and widely supported decisions, it is clear that multi-generational perspectives are required. While the workshop outcomes were accessible to all ages, the approach worked best as a Trojan Horse for communicating concepts to family and social groups, by positioning young people as the vector for climate-futures awareness. The school students worked on their art-science project and then, once it was on display in a gallery, they proudly talked to their family about what they knew about Antarctica and climate. This gives the initiative longevity well beyond the typical exhibition.

When talking to audiences about Antarctica and its place in our climate system we can use these science and art experiences productively in several ways. Centrally, we can show a wide variety of data plots, photographs of scientific equipment, computer simulations or artworks produced in, or about, Antarctica. Beyond this, it also helps to consider the audience’s understanding of Antarctica and climate, as movies are one of the primary ways people connect with an environment they will probably never see or experience. Even for people who do get to experience these environments—like Polar researchers—movies provide enjoyment, imagination, entertainment and learning, making them a shared entry-point into valuing our climate system.

Movies on Ice

In this section we humanise the people who collect some of the key pieces of information being used to project what future climate and sea levels will be. An Antarctic field camp is where (some) scientific data are collected, and where researchers embed themselves in an environment that allows them to make mental notes that are otherwise difficult to achieve from a desk—even if the latter is better connected to the wider datasets necessary for climate science. As well as a desire to discover new ice knowledge, such field camps are fuelled by collaborative work practises and socialisation. These are often built around shared popular culture—something that goes back through the history of Polar exploration. For example, the bar at Scott Base (the New Zealand research base on Ross Island, 77°51′S 166°46′E) used to have a wall-sized photograph showing Scott’s party enjoying a mid-winter meal, crowded around a long table; expeditioners found ways of amusing themselves with theatre, newspapers, crafts, art and games through the long Polar winter (Pearson 2004). Things are a little different now that expeditions are so much shorter, and we can travel with hard drives of entertainment.

The first Antarctic field season for Stevens took place in 2004 at a sea ice camp in southern McMurdo Sound (77° 45′ S 166° 5′ E)—a suite of converted insulated shipping containers lined up on sea ice floating on an ocean half a kilometre deep (Fig. 2). Several of the containers had hatches in their floors through which ‘hydroholes’ were cut to access the ocean below. The field team worked in these for several weeks, sleeping in one container, cooking and eating in another and sampling from the hydroholes in another. The 24-hour daylight and ready access to the ocean make it easy to overwork so there are deliberate strategies to take a break; one of which is ‘movie night on ice’. We would set up the biggest screen and best sound we had and sit together to watch movies. This collective activity echoes early expeditions watching shared entertainment to pass the time and bring the team closer.

Fig. 2
2 photos. Photo A has a row of steel containers on a frozen ice landscape. B is a photograph of a square hole on the floor and through the frozen ice.

Container-based sea ice field camp, (a) B. Grant and NIWA, the sea ice is two metres thick, (b) several of the containers have holes in their floor and through the ice © Stevens/NIWA

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The first movie watched while floating on ice was The Day After Tomorrow (Emmerich 2004), a story of family resilience in a sudden icy climate emergency. Generally, ice-based movies were the last thing people in the team wanted to watch; they were living on the biggest lump of ice on the planet and did not really need more—but there were exceptions if the movie was spectacular, scary or so perfectly aligned (like The Day After Tomorrow) that it had to be watched. In the wider world, the success of the movie was used as an opportunity to communicate climate science (Hansen et al. 2004; Hart and Leiserowitz 2009) although the science presented was criticised as unrealistic and alarmist (Bilandzic and Sukalla 2019). However, it is almost certain the critics did not watch it while sitting in a container floating on ice dozens of kilometres from the nearest help. The movie opens with a field science team in an Antarctic ice shelf camp just as the ice shelf cracks apart revealing a yawing chasm. Our team were on sea ice (typically only a few metres thick) and so very different to an ice shelf (sometimes a kilometre thick). If sea ice cracks apart the ocean is only a few tens of cm away, but it is cold, and the cracking would likely mean we were adrift. Consequently, the distinction did not seem so great to the team at the time. For all its forward projection around climate and poking a stick at contemporary government policies, the movie story is a conservative one about a dad—contrasted with his caring doctor ex-wife—trying to be a better man after having given too much of himself to science. This partly resonated with our Antarctic audience, as field science takes people away from their families for long periods. There were some evocative scenes in the movie relating to weather and extreme cold and how humanity will cope. An icicle-laden Statue of Liberty used as a key image was both visually arresting and echoed the final scene in The Planet of the Apes (Schaffner 1968), where the crash-landed space-travelling protagonist escapes captivity only to find the Statue of Liberty submerged in sand, implying he had time travelled to a post-nuclear Earth (Kirshner 2001). Time travel is often invoked in climate understanding, as our greenhouse gas emissions take the planet back to a time when sea levels, temperatures and weather were vastly different.

As well as the symbolism of the fallen Statue of Liberty, The Day After Tomorrow and The Planet of the Apes share a sense that our way of life may wreck what we hold dear. At the time The Day After Tomorrow was released, the public questioned its veracity and whether climate change is even real. Perhaps climate movies needed to shift further from reality as—despite the far-fetched nature of Planet of the Apes—one comes away with a clear sense that nuclear Armageddon will not have good outcomes for humanity. If you have recently escaped floodwaters, you are unlikely to quibble about the finer science details of a movie that suggests flooding is not good. For example, Selvey et al. (2022) describe how Queensland voters can ignore the evidence of climate change (based on data from 2019). However, there is clearly some tipping point, as only a few months after this was published, a Greens Party candidate won the electorate in question (Brisbane, Australia); the region had just experienced its worst recorded flooding.

Getting on with people is a critical part of working in Antarctica. Ice camps the authors have experienced had anywhere from 5 to 25 people living and working in them and were isolated from the large bases; it is far more efficient to be a small group with focused tasks in the right location than to commute from a large base. Typically, these small groups are drawn from a narrow demographic. We are not out in the field for very long—it is too expensive these days. However, the close work and shared experiences make for connections not found ‘back in the world’—a phrase from leading ice drilling engineer Darcy Mandeno, who has spent more time than most in ice camps.

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) explores the nature of group dynamics in an extreme way that makes for a perfect movie night classic, especially when watched in Antarctica. The movie opens with a bang: A rogue husky, infected with an alien virus, enters an Antarctic field base, is chased and shot at by a helicopter which subsequently crashes. The 12-person base team is all-male, not uncommon at the time, and with the usual set of character tropes. The researchers slowly become aware of what they are up against as they get picked off by the virus, one by one, in glutinous non-CGI detail. The dwindling pool of survivors tries to work out what is going on and who is, and is not, infected. The theme is unfortunately just right for this worldwide pandemic era and gives recent viewers a new perspective. The movie was released in 1982, a decade prior to the cessation of using dog teams in Antarctica due to biosecurity; there was concern for disease transmission and disturbance to seals and penguins—a theme that parallels the fears of a contagious biological mayhem unleashed in Carpenter’s movie. The ending leaves the viewer uncertain as to the ultimate fate of the two survivors, but they have an unspoken collective resolve.

The composer Ennio Morricone created a theme within the score of The Thing that is seemingly based around the human heartbeat. Snow is a good absorber of sound so standing still on snow on a windless day you can hear your own heartbeat. This is only if you are far enough away from the generators. When within proximity to the camp generators, there is a constant hum that underpins all activities. Once one becomes accustomed to this constant hum sound becomes a sensory input in a place where this is limited. The protected containers of the camp (Fig. 2) and long contemplative hours of sampling are well-suited to having music on—either quietly or (more frequently) loudly, depending on the mood. These are not the only sounds, though. The not-uncommon storms whistle past the containers, rattling and moaning. At night, lying in either a freezing-cold lower bunk or boiling-hot upper bunk, it is possible to hear seals calling across their ocean domain just a few metres below. The Antarctic soundscape ducks, weaves, clicks and vibrates, as an other-worldly parallel to Carpenter’s 1970s synthesis technology of oscillators, sweeping filters and sequencers.

One night, in the wrap-up phase of a recent expedition, 22 scientists and engineers living and working on a remote corner of the Ross Ice Shelf (82° 28′S, 155° 17′W)—sitting on 500 metres of ice, 1000 kilometres from the nearest base—crammed into the mess tent to watch the recently released 2021 filmic interpretation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. The movie is quite long, and bedtimes are typically early so we were fortunate that the generator needed re-fuelling at roughly the mid-point, giving us an excuse to split the movie over two nights. Unfortunately, because of the 24-hour daylight of the high latitude summer, the darker scenes in the film were not projected well (Fig. 3). On the other hand, the sound was fantastic (even with the generator), and effectively immersed us in the sense of a planet covered in sand where water is scarce enough that people wear suits to recycle all fluids. Given that we were living in a desert and were assigned “P bottles”—so that we are not randomly generating yellow patches of snow everywhere—the story did not feel that abstract. The worlds of Dune—Caladan, Arrakis and others—are clearly recognisable as perturbations of our own climate system. While the connection between life on these earth-ish planets and our own future is reasonably apparent (Buse 2020), it would have been less so in the 1960s when Herbert wrote his novel. There was real cognitive dissonance sitting in that tent and being emotionally affected by a barely visible artistic representation of climate future in a setting that was equally strange—but real and connected to the transition from one state to the other.

Fig. 3
A photograph of a group of people watching television inside a large tent.

Movie night in the mess tent with 24-hour daylight, © Stevens

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Less than two decades after the release of The Day After Tomorrow, as climate-driven disasters become more and more common, the planet is changing in both predictable and unpredictable ways. While the slow trends in things like ocean heat content and tropical storm frequency are of central concern as they are pathways to the desert of Arrakis in Dune, so too are the sudden localised disasters dramatised in The Day After Tomorrow. Powerful visual and aesthetic representations of change are one way to engage publics and decision-makers beyond the known narrative.

Representing What Lies Beneath

Movies provide a pathway to represent both icy worlds and climate narratives but how can visual information be used to communicate climate research? In this section we discuss how a range of graphical representations help explain our Antarctic research. The importance of clear and meaningful representations of climate science can be seen in the work explaining infectious disease science to a population grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the many key messages is the beneficial impact of well-designed graphical representations of scientific concepts (Beattie and Priestley 2021). The best of these helped (and continue to help) both publics and decision-makers understand what was at stake and take actions to mitigate future risks; indeed, “flatten the curve” (Li and Molder 2021, 899) helped scientists understand how to make their work impactful. In terms of science communication, and especially compared to climate, COVID entered hyperspace (Rauchfleisch et al. 2021). After decades of climate scientists trying to get wider publics interested in forecasts—of things like air and ocean temperatures, flood probabilities and so on—suddenly, within a few months, public discourse and interpretation started to successfully tackle complex quantitative descriptions of recent outcomes, future scenario-based projections and probability distributions through science communication about COVID.

Most people are familiar with various climate change diagrams, including the ‘hockey stick graph’, showing dramatically rising values of sea level, or atmospheric temperature, or bushfires, or floods (Mann 2021). Graphical representation in science is only now emerging from the era when data appeared in ‘plots’ and plots appeared in ‘papers’, on paper. Until recently, figures in colour or photographs cost authors extra. It is still the case that animations are not embedded in papers. Scientists retiring now would have started their careers with talks based around overhead projector transparencies, or even with line diagrams photographically transferred to 35 mm slides with a dark blue background and white lines. In contrast, scientists starting out now can distil their research topic into a 30 second TikTok video and then instantly distribute it to many thousands of people.

Whether climate-centred scientific diagrams are more-traditional black-and-white graphs or more-modern virtual reality visualisations of data, they all tell the same story of dramatic change. Our own science-art collaboration has influenced how we present the science and art—and their intersection. As mentioned, artist O’Connor was involved in the production of scientific data that then found itself in science papers (Stevens et al. 2019). Stevens was inspired to incorporate more cartoon-style graphics into scientific presentations to help explain observations and conclusions—not for frivolity but for simplifying a message from a wall of complexity, jargon and seriousness (Jonsson and Grafström 2021). One of the most effective methods we have found for communicating about our recent expeditions—to both public and research audiences—is short video-format sequences showing underwater scenes or field teams working (see supplementary video in O’Connor and Stevens 2018). Indeed, short movies and timelapses of art production and trans-disciplinary fieldwork impact pedagogical settings and exhibitions through their attention-grabbing, informative potential and their ability to invite a suspension of disbelief that is vital to making significant changes to ways of thinking and working. The relative ease with which we can capture high-quality video imagery of the ocean beneath ice enables us to engage with media outlets and do voiceovers with audience-focused messages. While such views are far removed from most audience experiences and have visual and aesthetic value, they are still an exploration of scientific data. Perhaps most importantly, they feed into evolving approaches to improved communication both using art and science, separately and together.

By taking these art-data and modulating them with experience of the environment, the artist develops pathways to science that do not start with a prescriptive ‘this way to being told about science’ (Menezes et al. 2022). What emerges ranges from photographic representations—equally appropriate for a gallery or a scientific journal—through to works built from completely unrelated material that represent intangible cultural tropes or scientific elements, such as connectivity and cross-cultural values (Hüppauf and Weingart 2007).

Discussion

What are the aesthetic, visual art and socio-cultural outcomes, and can science-based aesthetic communication be defined? Presentation and communication of scientific data have some well-established rules and structures, yet recently these approaches have started undergoing dramatic changes. Conversely, art has always sought to challenge rules and break down structures. O’Connor’s artistic practice—emerging from on-ice experiences—is multi-faceted and reflects the changes in science communication and inherent artistic deconstruction. O’Connor produced ice sculptures prior to the field work that morphed into representations of the crystals coating the underside of sea ice. In a gallery setting, this was arranged as a ceiling above a mat that the audience was invited to lie upon and look up into the ice crystal boundary—highly evocative of the fieldwork that produced underwater imagery without being a direct representation. In addition, photographs of individual ice crystals were displayed in large formats, like a portrait gallery, which imbued them with their own personality. Other works included A3-sized watercolours of both small- and large-scale scenes with a dramatic palette of pinks and blues. Finally, video loops of the ice crystals on a rotating Lazy Susan stage invoked the research process by showing how research evolves—in this case from using crystals made from clear plastic tape through to the final imagery of real crystals. This multiplicity of formats increases the probability of finding a way to make any given audience member expand their perspective (Cozen 2013). O’Connor refers to ‘hijacking’ the traditional science talk by incorporating visual art sensibilities—which, in turn, inspires scientists to improve how they communicate their science (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4
2 handwritten charts include details on ice melts in Antarctica with questions about why we should care, how things work, and how to change things.

Diagrams for talks presented to scientists and social scientists given by an artist, © Gabby O’Connor

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Can art communicate research on ice and its crucial importance for our planet? There is a long history of artists working in Antarctica (Jackson 2019; Stevens et al. 2019) although never in great numbers. While the resulting works are art in themselves with genuine aesthetic value, they enhance the science communication by providing a different—but related, and equally valid—perspective on ice and climate science. Art can provide a personal, humanised view or one that distils beauty or harshness. It is a view unencumbered by graphs and numbers. Beyond this, what interests us is when people do not know they are learning from the art; a kind of bimodal Trojan Horse allows concepts from parallel streams to cross over and enhance conceptual awareness.

What role does science play in, and for, our cultural ideas or imaginaries of ice? There is likely a hemispherical division in answering this question. The Arctic—despite its history of exploration and apparent impenetrability—has been home to peoples for millennia; science is just one thread in the Arctic story. Antarctica, conversely, is imaginatively and realistically within the domain of the explorer and scientist, as mandated by the Antarctic Treaty. In this way, scientists—if not always the science—are central to our cultural understanding of Antarctic ice. Due to the relatively narrow demographic background of Antarctic researchers, this also means that we have a narrow perception of Antarctic ice. In just one dimension of diversity, Antarctic field operations are one of the last arenas to allow women to participate on anything close to equal standing, which leaves a lingering legacy that remains a challenge. The future of successful science requires diverse scientists who think broadly about interpretation, representation and impact (Bernard and Cooperdock 2018).

We speculate that the new generation of scientists are more open to disciplinary synergies and crosstalk than their academic forebears and that this will enable wider audiences, given sufficient context, to embrace the shared creativity and research structures of science. Our own ice-related trans-disciplinary research yielded tangible outcomes for climate science, art, education and communication, and gives us confidence that audiences can be trusted to understand science. These aspects appeal to different audiences in different ways but the hope is that people can come away with an expanded appreciation of the role Polar expanses of ice will increasingly play in all our lives through the growing climate challenges.