Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao

Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao is a creative "weather report" from Haupapa/Tasman glacier, Aotearoa’s largest body of wai, water, a glacier formed from a deep exhalation of Aoraki, the ancestor-maunga, as he readied to speak. We respond to the "hau" of Haupapa, translated fluidly as moisture, air, breath, wind, tears and vitality. Within Kai Tahu whakapapa, Rakamaomao is related to Aoraki and is one of the progenitors of wind and weather. 

Through hydrophone recordings, underwater video and vocal modes of gifting and listening, as a collective of artists, scientists and orators we approach Haupapa as ancestor, a shape-shifting collaborator. Tiny bubbles of ancient breath and atmosphere are pressed inside Haupapa’s glacial ice – including sea breezes, pollens, carbon dioxide and methane, as well as the ash of Australian fires. 

Live updates will be streamed continuously throughout the 2022 Spring equinox (23 September 2022 – November 2022) to form a live web-based artwork based on physical data of wind, underwater images of glacial fragments and live hydrophone recordings. This material is represented as abstract patterns using live data stream from Aoraki and Haupapa glacier courtesy of Aotearoa’s Scientific Institute NIWA | Climate, Freshwater & Ocean Science. Kaumatua (elder) Ron Bull’s voice is woven through the sound and images to connect these images to the Kai Tahu ngā kupu, words and names of the ancestors. We attune to weather patterns through pulsing data patterns, voice and our ears.

ARTWORK: Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao

Click here to enter this online artwork 

Enter this online artwork to hear the sounds and feel the live weather data patterns from the winds, rain and snow from Haupapa glacier Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest glacier. Within Kai Tahu cosmology, Rakamaomao is one of the progenitors of wind and weather. Hover over left corner for full screen. Hover over right corner to see weather data (snowfall, rainfall, wind direction and speed, solar radiation, temperature) which changes the sound and image and voice parameters in real time. Designed for a computer screen but works on some mobile devices.

FILM: HAUPAPA: THE STORY OF A GLACIER

In this short documentary (above), the team of artists and scientists behind an interactive weather driven artwork Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao explain the significance of Haupapa Tasman glacier. The focus is on the Kai Tahu origins of this taonga (cultural treasure) as Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest glacier rapidly diminishes as the climate changes.

EVENT: HAUPAPA: APPROACHING A GLACIER

Watch a round table discussion with the collaborators of Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao 

CREDITS

Ron Bull

Ron Bull is Tumuaki Whakaako at Otago Polytechnic. He is part of the Kaihaukai Art Collective and together with Simon Kaan has produced social exchanges based around food nationally and internationally, including at International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) and Te Papa Museum. He is a Kai Tahu knowledge holder of Mātauranga Māori knowledge and a linguist. He has worked on collaborative art projects with artists such as Alex Monteith. He is a researcher on cross-cultural collaboration and engagement with place-based narratives through social art practice.

Stefan Marks

Stefan Marks is a Creative Technologist in the School of Future Environments at Auckland University of Technology. His main areas of research are collaborative extended reality (XR) and data visualisation or, as he prefers to call it, “data-driven, immersive storytelling”. Stefan creates tools to turn complex or abstract information into visual, audible and other sensory forms to allow the human brain to perceive, discover and understand patterns and relations. Some of his projects have dealt with earthquake data, the human nasal cavity anatomy, and artificial neural network connectivity.

Heather Purdie

Heather Purdie is a glaciologist at the University of Canterbury, with research expertise in glacier mass balance, dynamics and climate change, in a focus on mountain glaciers in Te Tiritiri-o-te-moana, the New Zealand Southern Alps. She is interested in glaciological change that occurs over short temporal scales. Most recently, she has been exploring rapid change at lake-calving glaciers, and the impact that crevasses have on glacier mass balance. She makes regular monitoring trips to Haupapa glacier and Lake Haupapa with a team of researchers.

Janine Randerson

Janine Randerson is an artmaker of video installations, 16mm films, sound and online artworks, and she often practices in collaboration with environmental scientists and community groups. Janine’s book Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art (MIT Press, 2018) focuses on modern and contemporary artworks that engage with our present and future weathers. Janine also facilitates art exhibitions, events and screening programmes.

Rachel Shearer

Rachel Shearer investigates sound as a medium through a range of sonic practices – installations, composing, recording, writing as well as collaborating as a sound designer or composer for moving image and live performance events. Active as an experimental musician releasing audio publications both locally and internationally, Shearer’s work builds on her research, which explores practices related to a listening to the earth through Māori and Western frameworks. She has received numerous public commissions for site-specific sound installations including the permanent nine-channel sound installation The Flooded Mirror on the Auckland waterfront.

Commissioned by Te Tuhi and curated by Janine Randerson. Supported by Creative New Zealand
Supported by NIWA | Climate, Freshwater & Ocean Science, who provided a live data stream
Supported by AUT University

Visit the project on Te Tuhi's website here; part of the weather station: Te Moana Nui A Kiwa, Aotearoa (Great Ocean of Kiwa, New Zealand) - find out more here.