Whalescape

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A V NEW PAPER 2020

Whalescape Designer: Qianhua Fu Tutors: Jessica In, Denis Vlieghe

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Table of Contents 04

A Blue Dream Imaging you wake up in the morning, and found your body is inhabited in a whale. the ending of Life story might be writen in two ways, deep to the ocean, or buried on the searth.

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I am Otto, a blue whale.

In August 1897, a young girl, the mouth of the Vasse River, Â The whale was reported to the Western Australian Museum and over the next three years. His name was giveb by the craftman who made it become sample, Otto Lipfert,

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Return to Ocean I designed a journey for Otto to retun his eternal home, ocrean.

Project Review

A Blue Dream

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uring this period, people all around the world suffered an unexpected hit from COVID 19. As a result, many people are beginning to rethink the value of their lives, many people have received restrictions on their travel, and I was forced to put my plans to attend a summer school in Melbourne on hold, and am now taking classes and submitting assignments remotely in London. These accidents have given me an insight into whether life itself is just an experience, virtual or real, it's all about how we look at differently. Could we create a new perspective for a normal object?For example, turning a live creature into a landscape to achieve his or her memory and sculpture as a monument.To answer this question, I did scene design for a whale.The main character is a blue whale named Otto. His body was found on the west coast of Australia in 1897. Over the next 30 years, it has been moved four times and is now carefully housed in the West Australia Museum. I used Blender to sculpt a whale-shaped island, instead treating it as a site; I treated it as the landscape itself, which could be a whale cemetery or a stretch of sea where Otto once resided. The island world of low shrubs and swaying seaweed is both a scene of whales feeding on nature after death, and an expression of the whale's whiskers and the parasitic barnacles on its body. The scattered whale skulls on the valley floor suggest the eventual return of Otto's body to the sea and its transformation into a whale's fall from its original resting place. These factors compose the ecology of the whale's life and death.

In terms of the language of the shot, I designed a full length shot that flips up and down on the surface of the water to suggest that this could be interpreted either from the perspective of a diver, or the perspective of the whale otto.

Whalescape was a very special exploration for me personally.

For a long time, I was obsessed with the magic of making intangible things tangible. Like turning sound into color, or human movement into a light show, I think what I'm trying to translate is from a memory of life to a landscape after death.

Throughout this journey, an emotional connection to other lives is built in an imaginary world, and although it only exists in this film, it is real to me and hopefully to all of you who is watching it.

Candace Fu

A Free diver encontered a whale in th Ocean, image from film Experience the Underwater World Through the Eyes of a Free Diver.

Image drew by author

Image credit Jen Christiansen Catherine Wilson, Scientific American

What happens to whales when they die?

Occasionally dead whales will wash up on the shore but more often than not they fall to the seabed in the deep ocean. In this food-poor habitat the carcasses represent a food bonanza; 200 years worth of food arriving all at once.

These “whale-falls” attract a diverse array of creatures from sleeper sharks to ‘snow-boarding’ worms and are considered important habitats for generating species diversity in the deep sea. Over 120 new species have been discovered living at whale falls including, the bizarre Osedax bone-eating worms. Once the meat has been eaten the fatty marrow inside the skeleton slowly breaks down and fuels chemosynthesis (as opposed to photosynthesis) based communities for decades!

The diagram below illustrates some of the processes at whale-fall habitats, as well as some of the interesting animals living there.

I A M O T T O, A B LU E W H A L E A Breif Story of The Western Australian Museum’s Blue Whale

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n August 1897, a young girl named Daisy Locke came across a beached blue whale near the mouth of the Vasse River.It would become one of the State’s most beloved treasures.

The whale was reported to the Western Australian Museum and over the next three years the Museum’s taxidermist, Otto Lipfert, oversaw its preparation for transport to the WA Museum.Two Japanese fishermen and a local farmer helped Lipfert to remove the flesh from the bones. The skeleton was then left to bleach in the sun for more than a year.

The bones were individually labelled so they could be reassembled at the Museum. The 24-metre-long skeleton was transported to the Busselton Railway Station in a horse-drawn carriage, where it was taken by train up to Perth. The cranium (skull) weighs more than 800 kilograms today. At the time it would have weighed nearly twice that, due to the oils stored in the bones.

The skeleton was reconstructed in a three-sided shed behind the WA Museum, on the corner of Francis and Beaufort streets. The bones were supported off the ground by more than a tonne of iron rods.

The blue whale was in this location until 1968. Due to the exposure to the elements, including sunlight, the bones appear bleached, or whiter, on one side.

In the 1970s a new building was constructed for the WA Museum on Francis Street. The skeleton was packed up ready for its new display. Getting the giant whale into the new Francis Street building was quite a feat. A crane had to be used to lift the skeleton in to the fifth floor of the Museum before the roofing was completed in the early 1970s.

Many Western Australians will remember their excitement and wonder as they reached the extraordinary display.

"… I always remember as a kid racing to the top floor to see the whale swimming through the clouds. __Jerome O’Driscmann

Image Credit the WA Museum

I A M O T T O, A B LU E W H A L E A Breif Story of The Western Australian Museum’s Blue Whale

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he Francis Street Building was closed in 2003 for safety reasons. The blue whale was once again disassembled and moved into storage at the Museum's Collections and Research Centre in Welshpool.

For almost 17 years the skeleton has been under wraps, waiting for its next home.

The Museum's blue whale was given the moniker "Otto" after the taxidermist who prepared it for display.

Displaying a blue whale is a complex and challenging process at the best of times. The WA Museum's blue whale project had even more challenges due to the heritage-listed building, the fragile, 120-year old skeleton, a dynamic pose that has never been done before and a metal armature (frame) that was bespoke for this project.

The pose of our whale is based on the latest research into blue whale feeding behaviour.

Using drone video and tracking devices, scientists revealed that blue whales roll and lunge as they feed on millions of krill.

Image credit the WA Museum

RETURN TO OCEAN

Metraphor of a whale Barnacle Head of a whale

Baleen

Whale fall

Landscape Elements

Distant montains

Shrumb and stones Entrance to the under world ( a rock pool)

Vally for Otto’s skull

UPPER LIVES The upper part of the island is made up of shrubs and rocks. Seabirds and tourists can stop here. A secret entrance to the underwater world is hidden in the rock pool. Scuber divers could swim to the under world through a narrow tunnel, and he could also choose jump and dive from the shore.

MIDDLE WORLD The underword is liquid, light and weightless, The sense of direction will be messed up. Swiming out of the end of the tunnel, the diver will found himslef stand by the side of a sank ship. Whale is used to be called see monster in history, and create damage in ocean shipping industry . We could explore the myth part of ocean here.

DOWN UNDER If the diver choose to go deeper, he could found the skelton of a blue whale, which have become part of the great ecology system, keeping feeding the mariane animals.

“Herman Melville” — Jorge Luis Borges

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e was always surrounded by the sea of his elders, The Saxons, who named the ocean The Whale-Road, thereby uniting

The two immense things, the whale And the seas it endlessly ploughs.

The sea was always his. By the time his eyes First took in the great waters of the high seas He had already longed for and possessed it.

(English translation by Stephen Kessler)

Full film could be watched here: https://vimeo.com/439155105