Above, Below and Within the Ice

Glazer Helen, Owings Mills MD

Investigators

Abstract

The National Science Foundation manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, the nation's program of scientific research on the southernmost continent. This project has the potential to create an appreciation in a wide audience of the ways in which research supported by the U.S. Antarctic Program uses the unique features of Antarctica as a "global natural laboratory" for a wide variety of sciences to benefit all of humanity. It also will illustrate in non-technical media how researchers use the unique features of the landscape to better understand the physical processes at work in Antarctica and how those processes affect the ecosystems of the continent, as well as Antarctica's role in the global ecosystem. The artist's works--photographs and three-dimensional sculptures--are designed to show interactions between the ice and the landscape, and how each shapes the other. These are interactions that are generally otherwise unobserved by lay people. She will also make innovative use of digital technologies, such as 3-D printing, to capture aspects of the experience. The overall thrust of the project will focus on these landscape interactions as well as, to a lesser extent, on the role of the Antarctic in the global climate system. Not only are the media in which the artist works at the cutting edge of new technologies, but she actively engages them to cultivate in a wide range of audiences, including traditionally under-served audiences such as students in the Baltimore City Schools, a very large urban district, an appreciation of the value of both science and art and how those disciplines can share intellectual intersections. The National Science Foundation provides access to US Antarctic Program activities in Antarctica but does not provide funding for this work.