Adaptation

A SymbioticA Project at Lake Clifton, Western Australia

About Adaptation

With climate change hinting at catastrophic results to some life forms (while others may benefit) it is the capability to adapt which is an advantage for the future.

In a broad scoping of issues surrounding life and ecology, ‘Adaptation’, SymbioticA’s long term project, opens important dialogue and debate surrounding human inaction, intervention, responses and responsibilities to the world at large.

Embedded in Lake Clifton, south of Mandurah, Western Australia, ‘Adaptation’ proposes a dynamic program of production-based artist residencies and events with a vibrant outreach and community program. Lake Clifton, as a location and a metaphor, offers a microcosmic peak into the broader issues of ecology and life itself. Download the Adaptation PDF

Call for Expressions of Interest: Adaptation Residencies

Expressions of interest are encouraged from practitioners from all artforms: visual arts, sound art, music, literature, performance, biological arts, ecological arts, tactical media, community and participatory arts.

Expressions of interest deadline: 31st March 2009.

Call for Expressions of Interest: Full information
Download the application form

Lake Clifton- Research areas

Surrounded by a rich human ecology, artists will respond to the many narratives that encompass Lake Clifton.

Lake Clifton is one of WA’s best kept evolutionary secrets. Home to the largest lake-bound thrombolite reef in the southern hemisphere, thrombolites, or ‘living rocks’, are built by micro-organisms, similar to the earliest recorded forms of life on the Earth.

A vital feeding and nesting site for endangered migratory birds, including the almost extinct Hooded Plover, and thickets of at-risk Tuart trees, the lake is also home to the falsely identified new species of black bream. Thrown into the lake by locals with the dream of fishing by the banks, the bream physically adapted to their new environment, became reclassified as a new species, and bred so rapidly that they have now themselves become a pest.

The lake and the thrombolites are culturally important to the Binjareb peoples’ creation story, settlement history, and this varied web of issues and histories  is now reflected in the multitude of different organisations working together to protect Lake Clifton’s significant niche.

Changes such as booms in development and global warming’s affect (or effect?) on rainfall deeply affect this rich ecosystem, paradoxically putting in danger the very organisms responsible for life itself, those living on the thrombolites.

Research areas may include, but are not limited to:
• historical importance of the thrombolites in evolution
• the area’s cultural history
• endangered migratory birds, fauna and flora
• environmental listing and protection
• the contradictory nature of agriculture and ecology
• global warming and its effects
• developmental impacts
• evolution of animal species
• stability and salinity of the lake’s water
• the network and interactions between the community, governmental bodies, scientific groups, action groups, businesses, land owners/dwellers and key cultural groups
• nuclear reactor site potential
• bio-prospecting
• the parallel between one of the fastest growing Australian regional cities to one of the slowest growing lifeforms

Adaptation Projects

The Sixth Shore
The Sixth Shore is a research and development project aiming to create a three dimensional audio soundscape tour that engages with the physical and social environment whilst challenging the participants through the conceptual  ‘interference’ of different levels of time in space in the soundtrack.

The Sixth Shore will be a collaboration between Perdita Phillips and engineers from the Monadelphous Integrated Learning Centre at The University of Western Australia. A working prototype system will be developed that will allow the ground position and orientation of a participant to influence the soundscape that they hear. The technical focus of this phase will be on a robust low cost solution using a centralised computer controller, local radio network and wearable unit with chip-based magnetic compass, accelerometer and ultrasound positioning.

Desalination Project
One of the major threats to the survival of the thrombolites is the increase in salinity of the lake, due to the decline in rainfall. The De-Salination Plant will be a kinetic sculpture that will use technological advances to circumvent the lake (or at least a smaller scale pool of the lake water) from the effects of climate change and urban development. The SymbioticA Research Group will combine scientific and ecological knowledge to create a sprawling public sculpture that may promise the lake’s salvation by acting as a minidesalination plant.

Desalination and The Sixth Shore supported by The University of Western Australia, The Western Australian Government Department of the Culture and the Arts, The Sidney Myer Fund and The Mandurah City Council. The Sixth Shore is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.