In this presentation the sci-art data music project Invasive will be presented in the context of a recent video project, Weir: the infrastructure of flow. This work was presented at the Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium in Whakatū Nelson in September 2022.
The definition of a weir is described as:
In this work, the weir is the theme for exploring how the flow of the river is contained and how that infrastructure impacts on the life of the aquatic species. The notion of e-flow or e-water (environmental flows) are means in which humans give back to the river, enabling it to flow downstream. This process is managed using an array of digital tools including remote sensing of water levels. These interventions into the river system have dramatic impacts for the ecologies of these ecosystems.
This project explores some of the more-than-human stories of the river by focusing specifically on fish species and their story of survival.
The sound component of the video is music which has been composed by bringing together historical data and DNA from 2 species of fish that inhabit the Murray Darling basin - the iconic native species Murray Cod in contrast with DNA from the invasive European Carp. The musical score with data points which traces both the journey of the river downstream and 111 years of the regulation of the Murray Darling through its locks, weirs, floods and droughts.
Visual content for the project is a combination of video documented along the MDB by Tracey as well as edits of news reports in the public domain to create a collage of imagery which tells the story of the more-than-human impacts and consequences of human management of the river system as an economic resource.
The Invasive project is a collaboration between Tracey Benson (AU) and Josiah Jordan (NZ/US) with initial funding provided by the Centre of Applied Water Science at University of Canberra.