Andrea Polli (US) / “Ground Truth“
Site: Sølvberget Kulturhus (foajee)
Open: Mon-Fri 10.00-22.00 (Sun.12.00-22.00)

“I am delighted to see the discussion around "ground truth" as it connects to a subject that I am passionate about- how to make "intimate" the data we get from instruments.” Roger Malina, The Leonardo Journal of Art, Science and Technology

For almost 100 years, throughout the world from Antarctica to Greenland to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, people have been stationed in remote, uncomfortable and sometimes hazardous locations for the sole reason of physically observing and recording the weather. Meteorologists, military and commercial pilots, air traffic controllers, and many others depend on this regular information, what they call "ground truth", despite the ubiquity of instruments that can provide precise and often much more detailed information without endangering human lives. Why, with all this sophisticated sensing instrumentation and satellite imagery, do we still depend on people on the ground looking up at the clouds? What is the meaning of "ground truth"?

"ground truth" project attempts to answer these questions by following weather observers and weather and climate scientists as they maintain and gather data from instruments and their own bodies at field sites in the Arctic and Antarctic. Ground Truth examines global climate change, human presence in these extreme environments and the inexorable connection between human life and the earth's natural cycles.

BIO
Andrea Polli www.andreapolli.com is a digital media artist, Associate Professor in Fine Arts and Engineering and Mesa Del Sol Chair of Digital Media at The University of New Mexico. Polli's work with science, technology and media has been presented widely in venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art Artport and The Field Museum of Natural History. Her work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, Art News, NY Arts and others. In 2007/2008, she spent seven weeks in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation funded residency. http://www.90degreessouth.org

Supported by The Finnish Bioart Society, The University of Helsinki Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, The Long Term Ecological Network, The National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, The University of Colorado, Boulder Center for Humanities and the Arts, Department of Art and Art History, ATLAS Institute and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation