Comets, coral and why art matters

When I first released my immersive film Coral I tied it to an astronomical event, the Transit of Venus. This rare conjunction of Venus and the Sun occurs in a pairs divided by a few short years then separated by around 122 years before the cycle begins again. There was a transit in 2004, one in 2012 and the next will be December 2117. I always intended to link the work to that date so my deadline was quite definite…missing it would mean a long wait.

The reason for my interest in this event is because I think it has something to say about our current efforts to respond to the impact of climate change and what might inspire us to act as a global community in the face of a global problem.

In the 1700s, Edmund Halley was working on a problem of his age – to try and determine the exact size of the solar system. He anticipated that it might be possible to derive this calculation, the astronomical unit, if there were observers at extreme points all across the globe to view the Venus transit. But Halley would not live to see next transit event so he wrote an impassioned letter to the astronomers who would be alive beyond him, calling on them, when the time came, to cross the globe to observe the transit and collate their calculations.

Halley died 20 years before the Transit of Venus in 1761 but inspired by him 120 observers of French, British, Danish, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, and Portuguese nationality travelled vast distances to 62 sites around the world to observe. This effort was exceeded for the 1769 transit when there were 63 sites reached by 138 observers.

This effort by diverse nations to observe the Transit of Venus in the 1700’s is known as the first attempt of global, scientific co-operation. Warring countries made agreement to allow for the safe passage of ships into one another’s territories because the attempt to solve the quest for the astronomical unit was considered to be to the benefit of all humanity. As NASA quotes on its website: “The quest to time the transit of Venus in 1761, during the Seven Years War, marked the first time the international community cooperated to answer one of the leading scientific questions of the day.”

Joseph Banks who travelled on James Cook’s Endeavour from England to observe the Transit from Tahiti in 1769 became an advocate for scientific co-operation. Banks suggested ‘The science of countries can be at peace while their politics may be at war.”

That collective effort, beyond territorial differences, to try and solve a problem of the day, is what inspired me. Though we are eminently more able to connect as global citizens today it seems there is nothing much that unites us to act as one, even in the face of global problems. But it is heartening to be reminded that there have been moments of global scientific co-operation, imperfect and imperilled as they were. They signal the possibility of a global community acting together in the face of a global problem like climate change. This is what I contemplated when I came to make Coral. It seemed to me that our community, needing the stimulus to act as one, might be put in contact through art with another vibrant, diverse community at risk – that of coral reefs.

I think of corals as model communities, they require diversity in order to survive; many species live in close proximity with one another often in symbiotic relationships. Their complex annual reproductive ritual is driven by the moon and moderated by the sun. They can stand very little temperature change. They are the canary in the coalmine of the world’s oceans and whilst we are working out what we might do, as individual countries, about climate change, warming sea surface temperatures have the potential to wipe out whole coral communities.

So I decided to make a film.

Coral, the film, is a completely non-narrated immersive experience. There is not one fact delivered nor one species identified throughout. It is rather, an emotive journey into the realm of the reef, as though we were to free fall to the sea floor and lay there for three quarters of an hour, just looking up as the life of the reef passed above us. Many times during the making of the work I was challenged about what could possibly be gained by a film where no information was given, especially since the heart of the work is a call to act communally to help the world’s coral reefs.

The answer for me lies in the power of art, why we make art at all and why it matters to all our cultures.  Art when it is done well, has the power to open our hearts. That is as simple as it is for me, and as difficult. In the course of working on Coral over many years I spoke to marine biologists who universally despaired that the release of increasingly dire information on the health of the worlds reefs seemed to have no impact on the human community. Sadly that is the truth, information does not impel action, unless we care, and art can make us care. That was my intent, but I did not achieve it alone.

In making artworks about coral I have returned over 14 years to the work of marine biologist Dr Anya Salih. She first contributed her magnificent microscopic imagery to my immersive installations in 2001. We are an unlikely combination but our specialities combined help to create exactly the sort of artwork that might hope to open the door to fellow feeling for the world’s coral reefs. Anya’s work focuses on the coral fluorescent gene, the purpose of which she is intent on unravelling. Our unlikely pairing is an emblem for me of what is required now. That we might bring our disparate talents to bear in support of the world’s coral reefs. That we find a way beyond the barriers of jargon of our respective fields and professional corridors to see where we might meet and where our efforts, when focused on a problem that seems sometimes insurmountable, might be viewed from a platform of hope.

What we hope is that communication may shift both hearts and minds. That is why I made Coral and why I asked Anya to contribute to it. The work travelled as digital ships to 28 of the worlds cities in 2012 just as Venus passed in front of the sun and viewers in all those cities looked up and saw and the beauty of the reef unfold above them. I hoped, in this collective viewing that I was harking back to Halley’s inspiration.  This persisting hope is why I imagine I will still be making works about coral in another 14 years and why I will be travelling to Anya’s Lab to view her latest developments. It is my attempt and the others I work with, to act in our own small way, together, as citizens of this beautiful, blue globe, in defence of one of its glorious, silent and struggling communities.

Author: Lynette Wallworth is an Australian artist and film-maker.

Images: All taken at a screening of Lynette Wallworth’s film at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM