SINUNI

Galerija sodobne umetnosti Celje
20 September – 28 October 2012

The Arctic Perspective Initiative and its transdisciplinary quest for data and traditional knowledge fusion through the development of an open and free sensor and Land knowledge system of systems.

Marko Peljhan, Matthew Biederman, Harry Ikirapik Ittuksarjuat, Muhhamad Hafiz Van Rosli, Kon-Hyong Kim, Lisa Haskel, Terrence Uyarak, Tyson Qaunaq, Danny Bazo, Karl Yerkes

The Sinuni is one of the major projects that Peljhan and Matthew Biederman are coordinating in the framework of the Arctic Perspective Initiative and its framework will be the basis for a larger National Science Foundation funding proposal in September 2012.

A large number of students that Peljhan advises are collaborating on the project, together with a number of Inuit hunters and artists.
This is the major hardware/software project in development in Peljhan’s SYSTEMICS laboratory at the UCSB/CNSI from 2010 on.

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit, international group of individuals and organizations whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. Its establishment is the direct result of the work of the IPY project 417. The aim of API is to work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic Peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting the creation of shared communications and data networks without costly overheads, continued and sustainable development of autonomous culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions is enabled.
In 2010 and 2011 API developed and for the first time experimentally deployed a robust open hardware sensor network and communication system, the SILAMILU NUNAMULU NIPILIURUTI (SiNuNi). The SiNuNi is an extremely low power, compact, modular and waterproof portable computing and recording family of devices, based on the Arduino architectures implementing a true mesh networking capability through low power radio and precise geolocation. It’s modular sensor architecture records basic meteorological, position and movement data, but it can be outfitted with an array of sensors as diverse as water turbidity, temperature, salinity and p.e. light quality and structure measurements. The open standards used in the software and hardware development ensure that the system can be built, modified and replicated in the North. The units also enable geolocated audio recording and wildlife observations and note taking through a simple, robust and intuitive interface. During the fieldwork in the Foxe Basin and the Fury and Hecla straits area (January and August 2011) large amount of environmental, wildlife observation and traditional placenames and trail data was collected.

The system enables instant review of the collection in the field, but more importantly, its mesh architecture enables a seamless transfer of data and network bridging between the different units without any specific inputs from the users, leaving them free to concentrate on the work on the Land. The geolocative approach to all data and sound recording gathering facilitates the creation of quick reference maps with audio annotations and the entry of the data in GIS systems. The main goal of the project at this stage is to enable a true collaborative engagement of indigenous field citizen scientists, possessing raw data and traditional knowledge entries, with the Arctic science complex, where the ownership and provenience of the data is clearly connected to work and life on the Land and can be freely shared between and understood by the communities. A larger future collection saturation and the creation of a display system for data sharing and distribution in several Arctic languages is envisaged.

Colophon

Project supported by the Ministry of Culture (Slovenia), City of Celje and City of Ljubljana.

Bios

Marko Peljhan is a theatre and radio director, conceptual artist and researcher. He founded and co- founded several still active arts organizations in the 90’s such as Projekt Atol and one of the first media labs in Eastern Europe LJUDMILA. From 1994 on he worked on Makrolab, a project that focuses on telecommunications, migrations and weather systems research in an intersection of art/science/engineering; the Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation and the Arctic Perspective Initiative. He is the recipient of many prizes for his work, including the 2001 Golden Nica Prize at Ars Electronica with Carsten Nicolai and his work has been exhibited internationally at multiple biennales (Venice, Lyon, Istanbul, Gwangju…) and festivals, at documenta, ISEA, Ars Electronica and museums and art institutions worldwide (YCAM, ICC-NT, PS.1. MOMA, GARAGE…).

He serves as professor and director of the MAT Systemics Lab at the University of California Santa Barbara, the Chair of the Media Arts and Technology program at UCSB, the coordinator of international cooperation of the SPACE-SI Slovenian Centre for Space Sciences and Technologies and editor at large of the music label rx:tx. In the radio spectrum he is known as S54MX.

Marko Peljhan

Matthew Biederman has been performing, installing and exhibiting works, which explore themes of perception, media saturation, and data systems from a multiplicity of perspectives since the mid nineties. Biederman was the recipient of the Bay Area Artist Award in Video by New Langton Arts in 1999, First Place in the Visual Arts category of Slovenia’s Break21 festival. He has served as artist-in-residence at a variety of institutions and institutes, including the Center for Experimental Television on numerous occasions, CMU’s CREATE lab, the Wave Farm and many more.His works have been exhibited in the US, South America, Europe and Japan, in a variety of festivals and venues such as 7 ATA Festival Internacional (Lima), the 11th Lyon Bienniale, the 2011 Quebec Trienniale, 2014 Montreal Bienniale (Musee des Arts Contemporain), Bienniale of Digital Art (BIAN, Montreal), Artissima (Turin, IT), Moscow Biennale, Art and Alternative Visions (Tokyo) and Sonic Acts (NASA, Amsterdam) among others. As a film and video maker, his works have been included in the FILE festival (Sao Paulo), New Forms Festival (Vancouver), the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Paris/Berlin International Meetings, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival. His public works have been shown at the ZeroOne2006 Festival (San Jose US), the SCAPE Biennial in New Zealand as well as producing custom commissions. He has collaborated with musicians as a visual artist since 1999, performing at the historic Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, as well as Ars Electronica, AV Festival, Elektra, Mutek, Futuresonic, FILE and many, many more. His works are included in public, corporate and private collections in North America.

Matthew Biederman

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit, international group of individuals and organizations, founded by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, whose goal is to promote the creation of open authoring, communications and dissemination infrastructures for the circumpolar region. Its aim is to work with, learn from, and empower the North and Arctic Peoples through open source technologies and applied education and training. By creating access to these technologies while promoting the creation of shared communications and data networks without costly overheads, continued and sustainable development of autonomous culture, traditional knowledge, science, technology and education opportunities for peoples in the North and Arctic regions is enabled.

Arctic Perspective Initiative