User:Catalina/Self Directed/Research

TEXT ON METHOD Catalina Giraldo 19th April 2017

Sky Islands in the Andes Mountains

As a biologist and visual artist I have been part of different research teams investigating past, present and future ecosystems. My interests have been to understand how the changes in climate have been modifying plants and vegetation through different periods of time and space. Today, my interest is discovering how to transform this knowledge in visual art. For the reason above, I have been exploring installations, video mapping projection and nature photography.

Some of the projects I have worked before took shape between 2011 and 2017 and where supported for many artists and technicians at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Eye Filmmuseum.

1. Lluvia de Polen. 2011. A collaboration with Holly Findlater Lluvia de Polen means Pollen rain. It is an art installation that was displayed at the annual open studios at the Research Center in Digital Arts (DARC), University of California, Santa Cruz. The wooden structure shaped beehive cell that evokes the earth and sphere-shaped pendulum hints pollen and pollen rain that takes place on earth at all times. The group of photographs that are part of the installation is based on the different Andean Ecosystems of Colombia.

2. Verde Oscuro. 2013. It is a mapping projection, a metaphor about the ecological history of the place a building occupies today. The piece lasts 13 minutes using video and music that evoke the ecological history of Digital Arts Research Centrer’s place in three eras: the past, the present and the future. While the live plants installation indoors and outdoors intends to create an environment to perceive and feel the inherent goodness of plants, and also to disperse native California plants in order to raise environmental community awareness.

3. Fluctuations. 2014. It is an allegory symbolizing the Ecosystems that occur over a cliff during different periods of time before today. This video mapping projection was part of Bloom Santa Cruz on Saturday April 19th 2014 at Abbott Lighthouse, Santa Cruz, California.

4.Naturalmente. 2017. It is a mapping projection on a balloon, a metaphor about the Earth. It is about the happiness concept in a sense of well-being and connectedness between different species of animals and the environment.

(More info here http://www.catalhinagiraldo.com/art-installations)

These works make grow my interest in exploring 3D animation and data visualization as a contemporary tool to imagine ecosystems in time and space. I feel that visual art communication is a powerful instrument to create awareness about the importance of ecosystems, biodiversity and wildlife. In the same way, Science and Arts overlap each other by giving shape to a new creation that enlightens insights, triggers our imagination and helps putting ideas in a new perspective. Especially subjects that are complex in multiple dimensions can highly benefit from the integration between theoretical knowledge and modeling with simulations and science visualization, shaping our sensory experience on something that by definition can neither be touched nor seen (Francoeur, 1997).

That is why today, I am interested in 2D-3D animation and data processing visualization with the aim to create a visualization concerning the changes in Vegetation of the Northern Andes ecosyst