NatureVolve issue 10

Issue 10

Read..

Visualising vision in zebrafish Digital

SciArt New colours

created from plants

Fresh water:

a scarce, threatened resource

& much more Like this image? Read more about the illustrator Marzia Munafò in our Scicomm section.

Front cover image: “Pharmacologic modulation of RNA splicing enhances anti-tumor immunity” A study published in Cell shows that splicing modulation in cancer cells results in the production of neoantigens and thus elicits anti-tumour immunity. The illustration represents the process of neoantigen (the flowers) generation on the surface of cancer cells (the tree) upon treatment with a drug the modulates splicing (the roots). © Marzia Munafo. All rights reserved.

Science

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Conservation

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Art

Written Word

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NatureVolve.com Communicating science Combining art

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Thank you to the following contributors to this issue: Aaron Slepkov Brass Rabbit Caron Ang Dana Simmons Dmitry Shevela Elisabeth Kugler Erin Jackson Gary Roberts Gerardo La Porta Helene Skjeie Thorstensen Jan van Ijken Jesús Muñoz Morcillo Julia A Licholai Katrina Vera Wong Lorenzo Li Greci Lucas Vimpere Marzia Munafò Monique Boodram Olina Søyland Bru Ryan MacDonald Sandy McLachlan Trevor Cox Uli Ap A special thanks to STEM Advocacy Institute (SAi), EarthWatch, EarthWild and OTT Hydromet.

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© NatureVolve digital magazine - all original content providers retain the copyright to their work.

No materials may be reused without permission.

Editorial note Welcome to NatureVolve issue 10 At NatureVolve, we are an international community uniting to share our ideas in science and art with the world, through the common appreciation of nature’s wondrous workings.

While sharing diverse fields within science to conservation and art, we especially emphasise the wonder of water and the oceans in this edition. Meanwhile, this does not leave out interesting discoveries and illustrations in the life sciences. We begin the Science section by looking at what is behind chevron geological structures, and then on the much smaller scale, peer upon a microfossil, and the eye of a zebrafish.

In Conservation, we are introduced to some species needing further protection, and the true value of fresh water to our society. Some extremely diverse science communication projects are presented in the Scicomm section, from a very inventive podcast that interviews engineers, to a professor’s quest to widen an appreciation for the fantastic colours produced from polarization effects.

In the Art section we have a mixture of styles beyond paintings, to photography projects that cross boundaries with science and sociology. In Written Word, we finish off with an indepth account of a devastating brush fire called the Getty Fire, in the context of climate change.

Our digital magazine continually shares the ideas of both scientists and creatives with worldwide communities as we all unite to celebrate nature. Being open and inclusive, contributions in many forms are welcome.

If interested to join us and contribute to an upcoming issue, please go to naturevolve.com/submission-form If you enjoy this issue please feel free to share the subscription link for free issues with others: naturevolve.com/subscribe

Thank you for your support and enjoy the issue!

NatureVolve UK team © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Contents SCIENCE 5 Unravelling the origins of chevrons 8 Magnicifent Microfossils

Art

9 Visualising Vision in Zebrafish

43 Creating new colours from plant material

14 Power Pylon Monitoring to Predict Ice Formation in the Scottish Highlands

47 Projecting the beauty of bacteria

conservation

54 Uli Ap

17 Fresh water – a scarce, threatened resource

55 Frankenflora

51 Brass Rabbit gives a voice to society’s hidden workers

56 Gerardo La Porta

20 Bright lights and migrating birds 21 Gulls can’t fly free of pollution

scicomm 23 Inventive Podcast shines the spotlight on the true creativity of engineers

Written Word 58 How the Aesthetics of Disaster Engulfs Climate Discourse

27 Our Favourite Social Networks Bring Us Closer to Science Communication 29 Painting with Polarization 33 Jan van IJken 34 Dana Simmons 35 Science illustrations by SciGrafik 36 Digital art reveals cellular secrets

extra 63 NatureVolve note and invite for entries 64 STEM Advocacy Institute (SAi)

40 Life looks pretty cool close up 41 Julia A Licholai © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Science

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earth science

Unravelling the origins of chevrons Chevrons are a type of wedge-shaped sediment deposit, that can be seen

on coastlines and continental interiors. They were originally reported by scholars as large, V-shaped, sub-linear to parabolic landforms seen in south west Egypt and islands of the Bahamas.

These bed forms are most commonly described to be parabolic generated dunes, with most being sculpted by the wind. Yet, the origins of these structures have been widely debated among researchers. We speak with sedimentologist Lucas Vimpere about his team’s investigation of how chevrons form, armed with his geological and outdoor skills.

Above: The Tamala Limestone exposed along the Zuytdorp Cliffs in the Shark Bay region, Wester Australia. The cliffs are composed of aeolian dunes deposited during the successive glacial periods of the Pleistocene. Here scientists rappelled down to describe and sample the different units in order to understand their formation and their age. Photo by N. Del Piero. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Q & A - Lucas Vimpere Please tell us about your background and current PhD studies I started my studies at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department of the University of Geneva in 2010. After my Bachelor graduation, I began a master program focused on sedimentology and reservoir geology.

During this course, I specialised in carbonate sedimentology with a particular focus on the Quaternary period. I did my master thesis on the costal sediments and units buried within the Dean’s Blue Hole on Long Island in the Bahamas. The goal was to dive in the blue hole (the deepest in the world at the time, being a depth of 202m), collect samples with a jackhammer, and use it as a natural exposure of the stratigraphy of the island, constrain its dimensions for the first time, and finally, try to explain its odd depth (lower than the lowest sea level at -120m).

I pursued my studies with a PhD focusing on the relationship between aeolian sedimentation, both in coastal and continental settings, with climate and global atmospheric circulation. We first compared the dunes (chevrons) of the Bahamian isolated carbonate platforms with the dunes of the carbonate ramp of Shark Bay in Western Australia. We then looked globally with inland parabolic dunes and the specific climate factors triggering their formation/migration.

The overall goal was to assess the desertification hazards and identify the regions most at risk with respect to global climate change.

What are chevrons and when were they first identified?

The term “chevron” has first been used to describe structural folds (see Ramsay, 1974) or laminae in oscillatory ripples (see Allen, 1982). In 1989, Maxwell & Haynes applied this term to describe the morphology of low-lying V-shape aeolian ridges in the Selima Sand Sheet (the Egyptian Sahara). This definition has then been reused by other geoscientists to describe similar landforms in the Bahamas, South Madagascar, and Western Australia.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Are they reasonably common or are they particularly well presented in specific locations, like in the Bahamas, South Madagascar and Australia?

If we look at the morphology, these ridges are very common along the world coastlines but their dimensions in the Bahamas, South Madagascar and Australia make them particularly extensive deposits.

The difference is that the term “chevron” has been applied in these three locations whereas elsewhere they are called parabolic dunes.

Why has there been controversy and debate about the origin of these structures?

Since different groups of research have worked in these three places, different interpretations on their depositional process were made. In Western Australia and South Madagascar, the explanation of tsunamis generated by a meteorite impact in the Indian Ocean is based on: • their large size and the fact that they develop on top of high cliffs where sediment supply is rather limited • the fact that (according to the authors) they are not aligned with the prevailing winds • their association with big boulders • oral traditions and mythologies of indigenous people mentioning giant waves and/or flood In the Bahamas, the giant waves generated by giant storms is based on: • a “trilogy” of deposits observed on one location on Eleuthera: boulders - chevrons - run up deposits • the presence of fenestrae (type of porosity usually found in beach settings) within chevrons • the fact that they date from the Last Interglacial when the global temperature was higher by about 2°C than today. Specific climate conditions during this period (e.g., changes in north Atlantic circulation, collapse of Antarctic ice sheet) would have triggered giant storms.

• the fact that these features cannot be observed during other periods of the Quaternary

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It is hard to differentiate between beach-to-intertidal and aeolian deposits because the latter is very often composed of reworked sediment that formed in a beach-to-intertidal environment. This is even truer for carbonates since they mainly precipitate and form underwater.

In your study published in Sedimentology in 2020, why do you advocate for a windblown (aeolian) origin of the chevrons in the Bahamas?

We started our study by assuming that both wind and waves could have been valid depositional processes for chevrons formation. The idea was to carry out a comparative study on chevrons, parabolic dunes (wind), and storm deposits (waves) and proceed by exclusion to provide a final explanation for their formation.

Final thoughts

We introduced new quantitative data on their morphology, sedimentology, stratigraphic position, and grain size composition that we compared with the other types of deposits.

Overall, all elements pointed towards an aeolian origin. We then explained why they were only deposited during the Last Interglacial by explaining their relationship with global atmospheric circulation, climate, and sea level variations.

“...these ridges are very common along the world’s coastlines, but their dimensions in the Bahamas, South Madagascar and Australia make them particularly extensive deposits.”

After stuying a PhD, Lucas Vimpere furthered his interest in geoscience, combining it with his outdoor passions while studying the formation of chevrons. Investigating the true origins of these geological structures, Lucas and the research team kept an open mind about the potential origin of chevron structures in the Bahamas, in response to an existing debate about whether they were shaped by water or wind. Considering a broad spectrum of data, their synthesis supported the wind (aeolian) hypothesis. This helps geoscientists to better understand the origins of chevrons across the world, such as in the Bahamas and Australia where they are especially large in size.

Bio

Links

Lucas Vimpere is a French/Algerian scientist who has been based in Switzerland for the last decade. As far as he can remember, he has always been interested in geosciences.

Email: lucasvimpere@gmail.com

Geology allowed him to mix his other passions, scuba diving and climbing, in the field to be able to reach remote places and difficult-to-access geological outcrops.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ lucas-vimpere-489077146 Google Scholar profile

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snapshot

Magnicifent Microfossils Organic microfossil of Palynodinium grallator (below) Image taken by Sandy McLachlan.

Scale bar = 10 μm. © Sandy McLachlan. All rights reserved.

About

Sandy McLachlan is an invertebrate paleontologist and micropaleontologist who completed his PhD through the Organic microfossils of Palynodinium grallator, Paleoenvironmental/Marine Palynology preserved resting cysts of a taxon belonging to Laboratory at the School of Earth and a group of extinct dinoflagellate phytoplankton, reached their acme in the fossil record 66 million Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, years ago. This species’ Cretaceous crescendo British Columbia, Canada.

His current research interests focus on is used to demarcate the Cretaceous– areas of Mesozoic–early Cenozoic marine Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary in marine settings invertebrate and phytoplankton throughout the Northern Hemisphere. biochronology, paleoecology, and The specimen featured here was recovered paleoenvironmental reconstructions. from the sedimentary rocks of the Oyster Bay Formation, which overlies strata of the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group along eastern Contact Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

ResearchGate: It was among the microfossils which enabled the https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ recent discovery of the first K–Pg event record Sandy-Mclachlan in the northeast Pacific.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Visualising Vision in Zebrafish

By Dr. Elisabeth Kugler and Dr. Ryan MacDonald

Above: “Conversation of waves”, 2021. The image shows retina support cells, Müller glia, visualized in the eye of a 3-day-old zebrafish. The colour combination highlights that the cells closely interact and are spatially arranged to do so. Technique: The image was acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 AiryScan microscope, using a 40x water-immersion LD C-Apochromat (NA 1.1) objective. Processing was conducted using Zeiss ZenBlack and Fiji.

Credit: Image acquired by Dr. Ryan MacDonald, processed by Dr. Elisabeth Kugler. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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The importance of vision research The eye is the sensory organ that relays visual information from the outside world to our brain via the light-sensitive retina. The human retina is only about 250 micrometers in thickness, which is about a third of a credit card or an eighth of a spaghetti noodle. Yet, it is formed by 9 cell types (5 neurons, 3 glia, and blood vessels), with over 60 subtypes existing for neurons alone, highlighting the intricacy and complexity of the retina.

Therefore, there is a clear need to learn how the cells in the retina fit together in the healthy eye and what happens when they become ill.

To do so, researchers often go back to the very start, namely developmental biology, which is trying to understand how cells and organs form at the very start, informing our knowledge on how these cells function, become ill, and potentially if these mechanisms can be manipulated to find a potential cure.

To study how the retina develops, we need to follow tissue development, growth, and function over time. However, as humans develop inside their mother and the retina is placed at the back of our eye, we cannot simply observe to study those cells. To get around these obstacles we use a model organism where the embryos are external to the mother and light easily passes through them, the answer is a zebrafish.

Zebrafish? Yes, zebrafish. The ones you can buy in the pet shop!

In our body, cells can generally be constantly renewed (like your skin for example), but this is not the case in the retina, where cells that are lost will be lost forever. So the retinal cells that we are born with are the ones we die with. As such, our whole life is a very long time for cells to survive and work perfectly without interruption. Sometimes cells do break down during our lifetime, like when we age or in degenerative disease, which, in the worst “There is no light without darkness” Mark Frost case, can lead to vision loss and blindness.

Above, left: “Luminosity”, 2020. The image shows Müller glia in a 2.5-day-old zebrafish. Each cell is individual in terms of position, shape, and brightness.

Highlighting that cells and tissues are highly dynamic and complex. The image was acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 AiryScan microscope, using a 40x waterimmersion LD C-Apochromat (NA 1.1) objective. Processing was conducted using Zeiss ZenBlack and Fiji. Above, right: “Heartbeat”, 2020. The image shows blood vessels (white) and developing support cells (red) in the eye of a 2.5-day-old zebrafish. The blood is what provides nutrients and energy for the eye to see. Technique: The image was acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 AiryScan microscope, using a 40x water-immersion LD C-Apochromat (NA 1.1) objective.

Credit: Processing was conducted using Zeiss ZenBlack and Fiji. Credit: Image acquired and processed by Dr. Elisabeth Kugler. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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How zebrafish can help us understand vision Zebrafish are more similar to humans than one might think. Zebrafish and humans share about 70% of genes, allowing us to study the role of these genes in zebrafish and translate that knowledge to humans. Also, zebrafish develop rapidly outside the mother and grow from a single-cell to a free-swimming larva, complete with organ systems, in about three days.

This enables us to investigate fundamental developmental mechanisms in very short time frames if compared to humans.

One of the most fascinating characteristics is that zebrafish larvae are almost transparent, so we can look directly inside their brain and eye to study their development. Even so, zebrafish larvae are smaller than the tip of a match stick and the cells in the retina are smaller than 10 micrometers, which is about the size of a single red blood cell. Thus, to study how the cells in the retina develop and function, microscopy is needed. To visualize the tissues and biological events we are interested in, we use fluorescent proteins that visualize all kinds of different tissues with different colours, such as blood cells in red, nerve cells in green, or muscles in blue.

How science impacts art The transformation of science into images allows us to share our vision research very naturally as imagery and visual art. Elisabeth always had a passion for both science and art.

She integrates her artistic knowledge into our science communication when displaying actual microscopy data, but applies artistic freedom on aspects such as colour, composition, or perspective.

This combination of scientific and artistic knowledge allows her to highlight selected image features, increase the visual impact, and facilitate communication across ages, backgrounds, and interests. Importantly, one does not necessarily need to understand the image content but assess whether they like it or not based on the evoked emotional response. For us, this means that we can share our fascination for research and science using visuals that hopefully inspire others.

When studying vision, we do this in living tissues, and despite common belief, cells, tissues, and organs are not stationary, but in constant movement and change. When considering this as a starting point, this drastically changes our

However, simply looking at the zebrafish larvae, one does not directly see something as the fluorescent proteins need energy. This energy is supplied by a highly focused beam of light, namely lasers of nature specific to the fluorescent protein that we are interested in.

Once the fluorescent proteins have enough energy, they start to emit this energy back as light. This emitted light is what can then be captured using a camera, and transforms science into images.

Right: “ground-breaking-point”, 2021. This image shows Müller glia in the eye of a 3-day-old zebrafish. Biologically this is a very interesting time because at this stage a natural wave of cell death happens which will shape the future, shape, and maturity of tissue. The four images show the same cells but with a different colour scheme, showing how colour-composition influences what we see. Technique: The image was acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 AiryScan microscope, using a 40x water-immersion LD C-Apochromat (NA 1.1) objective. Processing was conducted using Zeiss ZenBlack and Fiji. Credit: Image acquired by Dr. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Ryan MacDonald, processed by Dr. Elisabeth Kugler. All rights reserved.

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imagery and emanates in extraordinary colour combinations, angles, and video sequences.

Similarly, cells are not alone, but interact with others via an incredible spatial organisation, allowing them to interact with other cells and cell types.

Again, these individual interactions are very dynamic, and using state-of-the-art microscopy we can begin to unravel these dynamics in 4Dimensions (D)+ (3D, time, different wavelengths, etc). One of Elisabeth’s favourite science moments is still the first time that she saw a green beating heart in a living zebrafish through a microscope.

This is over a decade ago, yet it encompasses her fascination for science, art, and dynamics as well as

light, microscopy, and vision all in one memory.

Ryan can’t get over how beautiful and intricate the retina is. He’s spent his entire scientific career enthralled by how cells somehow fit together and make connections in the embryo such that a baby can see at birth!

Using a zebrafish embryo allows us to watch the intricate dance of cells trying to find their partners and fit into a larger puzzle. It’s as if we have a window to the party. Visualising these events and understanding the secrets of eye development is what excites Ryan the most and keeps him coming back for more.

Left: “Watersheds”, 2020.

This image shows Müller glia in the eye of a 3-day-old zebrafish. The image has undergone data processing, which has lead to the seen artistic abstraction. Different colours depict specific parts of glia cells and the retina.

Technique: The image was acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 AiryScan microscope, using a 40x water-immersion LD C-Apochromat (NA 1.1) objective. Processing was conducted using Fiji.

Credit: Image acquired and processed by Dr. Elisabeth Kugler. All rights reserved.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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How art impacts science...

And vice versa, art influences science. In our case, this is less about how we conduct science rather than how we represent our data and communicate them. This is best exemplified by studying threedimensional data in two dimensions using a depthcoding-based approach.

This means that structures are assigned colours based on the anatomical location. Using this initially for pure science communication, the lab and others use this technique now for scientific communication and publications.

In her free time, Elisabeth likes to draw and paint.

Here, her scientific work influences her art often more indirectly and subtly, e.g. in terms of colourgradients or shapes. For her, (science-)art has the most significant impact on her scientific work by improving her overall communication skills; and this is mainly due to two reasons.

Firstly, while science is often communicated within a highly specialized field and scientific niche, art is often communicated to and shared with a wider community. Thus, communicating art requires a distinct communication skill-set from science.

Secondly, engaging with people other than researchers from one’s field means being exposed to additional ways of thinking and questions.

Additionally, engaging with art exposes one to myriads of things beyond their research, creating new opportunities and networks.

The appreciation for the fact that arts and sciences are not separate but inspire each other is not a new concept, but something that has repeated itself in history. The most famous examples are people such as Leonardo da Vinci or Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Back in those days, there were no cameras or microscopes to visualize and eternalize scientific findings and observations, but everything needed to be documented by highly detailed drawings and descriptions. These documents were of such high quality that some of those are exhibited nowadays as artwork in art galleries around the world.

So we believe that while the concept of scienceart is clearly not new, the new ways to visualize and manipulate research data opens up new avenues to share our science with others.

Together, it becomes clear that science and art are not separate, but interwoven and when combined intelligently and efficiently they can support each other, building a synergy that makes each field stronger than they would be on their own.

About the team

Find out more

Elisabeth Kugler and Ryan MacDonald are scientists at the University College London, studying how cells form functional complexes during eye development. Their work heavily relies on microscopy images to examine cells on a subcellular level.

Images from both their work have been featured on several covers. Over the last few years, Elisabeth has merged her interest in drawing and painting with her scientific microscopy images, creating digital media science art to share and advocate science with others.

Elisabeth Kugler Website: www.ElisabethKugler.com Twitter: @KuglerElisabeth

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

MacDonald Lab Website: zebrafishucl.org/macdonald-lab Twitter: @MacDonald_Lab

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company

Power Pylon Monitoring to Predict Ice Formation in the Scottish Highlands

By Martin Maly (for OTT HydroMet)

Winter can get grim in the heights of Scotland.

To make power supply more reliable, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) wanted to understand more about ice formation on its power lines. A tailored solution by OTT HydroMet monitors the microclimate surrounding the power pylons and automatically sends alerts when the lines are about to freeze. Now, it faces its second winter season.

Overhead transmission lines are the cheapest and most common way to provide electric energy from one place to another. Being exposed to wind and weather, the metal conductors are prone to elongation © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

causing the lines to sag. Low hanging lines can be a significant safety risk, especially if they span roads. Power suppliers have to ensure they reduce the power capacity or even shut down power transmission when the lines hang too low. The critical variable is the right time to not waste power capacity whilst keeping transmission safe.

The grim Scottish winter can drag conductor lines down Typically, line sags occur on hot summer days, when the sun heats up the conductor lines, leading to expansion of the line material (in most cases p14

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aluminum or copper). Extreme cold can cause the same.

Different to the valleys and the coast areas of Great Britain, snow and frost are quite common in the Scottish Highlands from November to March. Ice formation increases the weight of the power lines which drags them down. Thus, SSEN is eager to know the current situation at the power pylons.

In December 2020, OTT HydroMet installed meteorological stations with cameras on three power pylons that proved to be susceptible to ice formation in the past. Their task was to predict ice formation on the transmission lines and send automated warnings to the electricity network operator.

Tailored solutions for various power pylons For OTT HydroMet UK, this was quite a unique request and an interesting challenge, too. Mounting a robust weather station on a power pylon, 15 meters above the ground, is one thing, supplying the necessary energy to run it, another one. “It might sound strange but providing power to run a weather station and further equipment on a pylon is complicated because you cannot use the electricity from the transmission lines,” Robin Guy says, Senior Service Technician at OTT HydroMet UK. His team worked on a solution that is powered by a solar panel and still provides all relevant measurements even on short and dark winter days.

The system contains: • Lufft WS502 weather sensor to monitor temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, wind direction, wind speed, radiation • OTT netDL 1000 data logger and 4G communication unit with ultra-low power consumption • OTT Solar 1205 battery that gets charged by the 140W PV panel • Customized mounting brackets for various pylon geometry • Camera and conductor sample to display the conditions on the transmission lines

About

Intelligent data communication for low power consumption With energy supply being critical, the team implemented an economical but smart data communication schedule. “We set the communication intervals to six hours,” Robin Guy says. “While the WS502 weather sensor takes measurements every 15 minutes, average values are being sent together with a camera picture four times a day.”

The whole solution takes measurements of these parameters: • • • • • •

Voltage Air temperature, relative Humidity, relative air pressure Average wind speed, maximum wind speed, wind direction Global radiation Dew point General icing alarm, extreme icing alarm

When the weather conditions change and make ice formation more probable, the communication intervals switch to alert modes with a frequency of one data transfer per hour or, in high alert mode, every 15 minutes. “This is close to realtime monitoring”, Robin Guy says, “and it allows SSEN to react on short-notice. Electricity can be transferred way longer now before the sag really sinks to dangerous heights”.

Do you want to learn more?

Find out about OTT HydroMet on their website: blog.otthydromet.com/en/category/ meteorology

OTT HydroMet provides decision makers with vital, trustworthy insights.

Their exceptional technical expertise and innovative solutions successfully integrate hardware, software, and services to support a vast range of environmental monitoring projects.

OTT HydroMet offers over 600 years of combined experience and a strong commitment to customers, enabling good decisions to be made that do not only protect lives, but the environment on planet Earth.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Conservation

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conservation

non-profit

Fresh water – a scarce, threatened resource

By Gary Roberts (with support from Neil Bailey, Isabel Bishop and Charlotte Henderson of Earthwatch Europe.)

Water is life, without it we are nothing. Worryingly, it’s an increasingly

scarce and threatened natural resource with global freshwater biodiversity declining at twice the rate of oceans or forests. Whilst Earth is often described as the ‘blue planet’, perhaps surprisingly, only 2.5% is fresh water. Of this, no more than 1% of the world’s fresh water is available for human use. Alarmingly, this 1% is in rapidly declining health. Abstraction, urbanisation, climate-change and pollution have all caused dramatic declines in freshwater biodiversity and habitats within the past 50 years.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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‘Chemical cocktails’

To our shame, this issue is especially acute within the UK. England’s rivers, in particular, are again the focus of media coverage (January 2022), as MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee warn of a ‘chemical cocktail’ of raw sewage, agricultural fertilizers run-off, slurry and microplastics entering freshwater systems.

In England, only 14% of rivers meet ‘good ecological status’ criteria. This rises to 33% for rivers in Northern Ireland, 40% in Wales and for Scotland’s rivers it’s 66%. Improvements to freshwater ecology are urgently required throughout all four UK nations and are increasingly critical for rivers in England. 14% is a shocking, embarrassing statistic. Equally shocking, is how many people are unaware to the extent of this global problem. However, this urgency is becoming increasingly apparent, reported on and exposed, as evidenced: • House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Water Quality In Rivers Fourth Report – January 2022.

• A recent RSPB report found 43% of people believe that the UK’s fresh water systems are in good ecological condition.

• WWF (February 2021) warned that UK is “no exception” when it comes to the loss of freshwater fish species, as a report exposes the dire outlook for populations across the world.

• Within UK waters, burbot and sturgeon are extinct, salmon have suffered significant declines and the eel is critically endangered (WWF, February 2021 press release re: World’s Forgotten Fishes Report).

• In 2020, The Guardian reported water companies in England discharged untreated sewage into rivers more than 200,000 times during 2019.

• Environment Agency (2020) reported that all rivers, lakes and streams in England are polluted. This comes as their budgets have been cut by two-thirds since 2010, making it impossible to effectively monitor the situation.

• 38% of waterbodies in the European Union are affected by diffuse pollution (UN Water, 2015).

• According to UN World Water Development Report (2017), it is likely that globally over 80% of waste water is released to the environment without adequate treatment.

Public Anger continues to grow. People do care about their water – its health and quality. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

As we increasingly use ‘blue spaces’ to enjoy wild-swimming, paddleboarding, rowing, canoeing, fishing, walking – it’s surely not unreasonable to expect our waterbodies to be safe to do so.

However, people often feel powerless to do anything. This is why, environmental charity, Earthwatch Europe is developing a blueprint to build its global Freshwater Watch Programme.

Making the invisible, visible

Earthwatch provides vital support to safeguard freshwater ecosystems and improve the health of these habitats by empowering citizen scientists and communities to collate and use water quality data to protect waterbodies. To improve this situation, Earthwatch seeks to understand where and why problems are occurring through the development of scientific datasets.

Water quality is managed by governments and agencies but there are often gaps in their data, so changes can go unnoticed. Many people don’t understand what they personally can do to help.

There is a lack of connection. Those who are engaged want to do more, but rarely have access to the data and evidence they need to demand change. For Earthwatch, the starting point is to monitor water quality. To make the invisible visible.

This provides evidence from which pollution is identified so decisions can be made to help improve the management of our precious freshwater.

Protecting our fresh waters

Since 2012, Earthwatch has developed and managed its highly-respected, successful FreshWater Watch Programme. Throughout these ten years, FreshWater Watch has grown to support 14,000 citizen scientists in the global collection of 30,000+ datasets. Through engagement, empowerment and mobilisation of community citizens Earthwatch has helped protect 1,200 waterbodies worldwide from UK chalk streams to Lake Tanganyika in Africa.

Earthwatch’s extensive database has enabled them to research global trends, explore local issues, engage communities and share data with governments to support water conservation.

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WaterBlitz

The value of robust citizen-science is demonstrated through Earthwatch’s Spring 2021 WaterBlitz project, which collected 1,568 water quality measurements across the UK’s Thames Valley, in Dublin, Luxembourg and Paris. Collated data provides alarming results: • 52% of waterbodies measured had high nitrate levels and 23% high phosphate concentrations.

• Thames Valley: 70% samples showed high nitrate levels.

• Luxembourg: c.28% of sampled waterbodies had highest phosphate levels.

• Dublin: 26% showed highest records of litter in or near water.

• Paris: 37% of waterbodies measured showed high concentrations of nitrates and 19% high phosphate levels, with only 1% of waterbodies measured in Paris located near agricultural land.

Importantly it will create connections with and between communities. FreshWater Watch provides stewardship to dedicated groups who want to monitor the health of a specific water body and take action to restore and protect it.

Groups have access to: • Water testing kits.

• Online platform.

• Mobile app to collect data.

• Training resources including video tutorials on how to take samples.

• Use of recognised methodology to influence authorities and/or polluters.

Strategic goal

With conservation science at its heart, Earthwatch has set a series of ambitious targets to deliver

by December 2023. These are to connect 2,500 citizens and 50 community groups with their local A new global freshwater watch movement freshwater environments, collate data from 500 For Earthwatch to fulfil its vision of achieving clean, waterbodies to proactively support change and healthy freshwater it has to generate more data and initiate actions at 30 waterbodies that improves connect more people with their local waterbodies. their water quality. To achieve these, Earthwatch By 2030 Earthwatch aims to engage 100,000 people to safeguard 10,000 water bodies across Europe and Africa, seeks funding support, partnerships and people to engage with Freshwater Watch to conserve our to ensure the FreshWater Watch movement protects freshwater ecosystems everywhere and for everyone. To scarce fresh waters. achieve this, it must engage with a greater number and Watching George Monbiot’s Rivercide documentary diversity of communities and create a true FreshWater provides a shocking, disgusting insight into the Watch movement. extent our rivers are being polluted, by whom and what we all need to do to ensure our water Building momentum through citizen science resources are clean, healthy, pure and ecologically Armed with this data, communities have, since 2012, diverse. Protecting our freshwater ecosystem successfully worked together with decision-makers to services makes good financial sense. protect and better manage our precious freshwater.

Earthwatch now plans to build on this foundation to deliver its 2030 strategic goal and gather momentum by In 2012, the Office for National Statistics estimated raising awareness, engage new communities and deliver that UK freshwaters had a value of £37 billion to our economy. solutions that value our freshwater. Through robust citizen science, Earthwatch aim to build and support a These ecosystem services are provided for free by global network of local communities so people become more actively aware and care about their local freshwater nature. Why do we continue to poison them? bodies across the UK, Europe and Africa.

About the Author

With a passionate interest in our natural world, Gary has enjoyed a 36year career connected with nature, biodiversity conservation, rewilding, environmental and international issues. Gary is Director/Founder of Earthwild Partnership Ltd – an innovative communications, sustainability, management company. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Links Earthwild website: earthwildpartnership.com Earthwatch website: earthwatch.org.uk p19

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in focus

Bright lights and migrating birds Bright lights and migrating birds (below) © Erin Jackson. All rights reserved.

For birds like this Baltimore oriole, migration can be a perilous journey.

Alongside threats like exhaustion, predators, and starvation, they must also brave challenges posed by humans. Light pollution attracts and disorients birds, leading them to hazardous obstacles like buildings, while constant human activity causes noise and loss of important stopover areas. In this digital painting, a Baltimore oriole flies through the night sky, awash with light from the city below.

About

Erin Jackson is a MSc of biology student at Carleton University. She is currently modelling how light pollution and human population density affect the types of sites different bird species choose to migrate through. For her undergrad in neuroscience and biology, she studied the role of morphology in bird-building collisions.

Alongside birds and science, Erin is also passionate about creative writing and illustration, and draws inspiration from nature in her work.

Read her poem Reverse here.

Contact

Website: perspectives34.wordpress.com © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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in focus

Gulls can´t fly free of pollution Urban gulls are exposed to environmental contaminant

cocktails. By feeding from marine food webs, they ingest contaminants that are a legacy of previous releases, accumulated and still transferred in food webs.

In addition, by living in urban environments, they are exposed to human induced contaminants.

Nature loving gulls can´t escape anthropogenic pollutants (below) © Helene Skjeie Thorstensen. All rights reserved.

The photo shows a lesser black-backed gull.

Bird sampling is done with care and skill by qualified personnel, and with permissions and certifications in place.

Contact

Research group leader, Katrine Borgå’s bio: www.mn.uio.no/ibv/english/ people/aca/katribor Helene’s twitter: @helenetho

About

The project is part of a monitoring program, Environmental contaminants in an urban fjord.

The program is carried out by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) for the Norwegian Environment Agency and led by researcher Anders Ruus (NIVA).

The seabird research project was a collaboration with project leader Anders Ruus, Professor Katrine Borgå from the University of Oslo (UiO) and Morten Helberg from Østfold University College (HIOF) as key researchers. Three master students were affiliated with the project at UiO, including myself.

I was lucky to stay on as a research assistant after graduating, working with the project results. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Scicomm (Science communication)

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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scicomm

PODCAST

Inventive Podcast shines the spotlight on the true creativity of engineers Professor Trevor Cox founded Inventive Podcast from the University of Salford where he specialises in acoustic engineering. Through the podcast, he interviews engineers from diverse backgrounds, emphasising the impact of engineers on the world.

By bringing talented writers into the podcast, fact and fiction are intertwined so that engineering can be made more accessible to the public. Trevor shares with us some of the amazing guests that have been interviewed so far, and discusses the importance of engaging the public in engineering, to make this fascinating field more accessible and to demonstrate its hidden value to the world.

Above: Trevor Cox, Professor in acoustic engineering at University of Salford. © University of Salford. All rights reserved © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Q & A - Trevor Cox Please introduce your background and expertise in acoustic engineering.

“Engineering often fails to tell its story well, and this is one reason that many people don’t understand what an engineer is, and what an engineer does.”

Why did you want to unite writers and I’m Professor of Acoustics Engineering at the University engineers through Inventive Podcast? of Salford and head of the Acoustics Research Centre.

Some of my research is about improving speech communication, for example I currently work on the Clarity project, which is running machine learning challenges to improve hearing aids; a project improving the acoustic design of transparent facemasks has just finished, and previously I’ve researched the problems of poor acoustics within schools. I started off in physics, but my work now spans physical acoustics, machine learning and psychology. I can now include archaeoacoustics in the list, having investigated the acoustic properties of Stonehenge through a 1:12 scale model.

I have been active in public engagement for 25 years. I’m an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Engineering Engagement Champion and a past EPSRC Senior Media Fellow.

I have presented science shows at the Royal Albert Hall, Purcell Rooms, and Royal Institution. I have also presented >25 documentaries for BBC radio including: “The Physicist’s Guide to the Orchestra.” For my popular science book Sonic Wonderland (in USA: The Sound Book), I won an Acoustical Society of America Science Writing Award in 2015. I have also written for National Geographical, The Guardian and New Scientist.

Engineering is full of stories. It’s about people facing challenges and digging deep to overcome them.

Unlike conventional action heroes, however, it is not how far they can jump or climb that saves the day. It’s how engineers apply complex scientific knowledge and practical expertise. Unfortunately, the technical depth that lets engineers achieve what they do, is also a barrier to public appreciation and understanding. Sadly, engineering often fails to tell its story well, and this is one reason that many people don’t understand what an engineer is, and what an engineer does. The media portrayal of engineering is also very disappointing, full of programmes obsessed with heavy engineering, history or engineering going wrong.

By bringing in writers I hoped to explore different ways of telling the story of engineering that would be more accessible to the public. The Inventive podcast mixes fact and fiction to explore new ways of telling the story of engineering. We’ve encouraged the writers to experiment, so we’ve seen lots of different approaches, including rap, poetry and short stories. These have explored dystopian futures, the surprising consequences of engineering and unusual personal stories of people in engineering.

How have different people and the University of Salford collaborated to make Inventive Podcast a reality?

The presenter (Trevor Cox), sound engineer (Adam Fowler) and animator (Annabeth Robinson) are all academics from the University.

But we’re also working with experts at Overtone Productions to research, record, create and publicise the podcasts (especially Gill Davies and Anna Scott-Brown). Alongside the podcast, there are linked curriculum and career materials being created by NUSTEM at Northumbria University (Carol Davenport, Antonio Portas and Jonathan Sanderson).

Above: Shrouk El-Attar. © Shrouk El-Attar. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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PODCAST

How has the podcast been going so far?

We’ve finished two series with 11 podcasts in total.

Alongside meeting some amazing engineers and working with wonderful writers, a highlight was getting the podcast featured in the New Scientist.

We started series one with Electronics Engineer Shrouk El-Attar. She’s an inspirational refugee and campaigner for LGBT rights, who was awarded the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) Prize for her work in femtech, smart tech that improves the lives of cis women and trans men. Award-winning writer and poet Tania Hershman created a hybrid work drawing on Shrouk’s story: Human Being As Circuit Board, Human Being as Dictionary. This combines fiction, poetry and non-fiction. There is beautiful and poetic imagery, “human being as circuit board”, and exploration of language, “human being as dictionary,” building to a climax like nothing you’d get in a straight interview podcast.

In series two I interviewed Larissa Suzuki, who is Head of Data and AI/Machine Learning at Google and who has won numerous awards. The interview delves deep into the ethics of collecting data on citizens for smart cities, which inspired Author Tim Maughan’s short story, My City is Not a Problem.

This wittily explores a fictional AI system built to solve London’s problems, which seems to think it knows better than the politicians that commissioned the algorithm!

What are your next plans for 2022?

Is there a particular kind of an impact are you hoping to make, from academia out to wider society?

The current focus is on the rolling out of the curriculum and career materials to schools through NUSTEM and evaluating the work. Another key target for 2022 is building the audience, with so many podcasts on offer, it is difficult to get yourself heard. We’d hope to use live events to get the word out, but COVID has made that difficult.

We’re currently working on some animations with students at University of Salford to help with the marketing. I’m also starting to look for ways to fund series 3, as the EPSRC funding is ending soon.

Ultimately, we’re looking to foster inventive ways of telling Engineering stories that connect to a broader audience; inspire public understanding of who engineers are and what they do; inspire diversity in engineering through diverse role-models and encourage future generations of engineers.

Above: Larissa Suzuki. © Larissa Suzuki. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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PODCAST

Above: Inventive Podcast logo. © Inventive Podcast. All rights reserved.

Final thoughts Out of a background in physics, Professor Trevor Cox delved into the world of acoustic engineering, but didn’t stop there. Beyond academia, Trevor is an avid, experienced science communicator, being the host of Inventive Podcast, on a mission to share the personal stories of engineers, while making engineering more accessible to everyone. Follow the links below to have a listen to the podcast!

Below: Trevor Cox at work. © Trevor Cox. All rights reserved.

Bio Professor Trevor Cox is a Professor of acoustics engineering at the University of Salford, having founded the Inventive Podcast. He is also head of the Acoustics Research Centre.

Links Podcast: www.inventivepodcast.com Twitter: @PodInventive Facebook: www.facebook.comInventivePodcast Instagram: @inventivepodcast

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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outreach

Our Favourite Social Networks Bring Us Closer to Science Communication

By Monique Boodram guest writer

It might have been a dead end, had I not responded to #AcademicTwitter posts here

and there. I was relatively new to the field of science communication, and I knew no one personally who pursued this area. Rewinding, life was either STEM or not STEM. However, with a passion to share, I ended up communicating science without even knowing I was doing something called “science communication.” Looking for ways to attract an audience, I found hashtags on Twitter useful when I posted my new scicomm YouTube video. Particularly, the #AcademicTwitter and #sciencecommunication tags were most relevant, and that sent me down the rabbit hole of this endeavor...

Above: STEM First! Gen. connects science communicators with platforms such as Twitter and Medium. © Stem First! Gen. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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The pandemic was also another reason why I spent my summer hanging around the internet and its complementary networks. “What can I do to interact with others without stepping over that risky in-person boundary?” Luckily, the SciComm groups on Twitter were sport. Participating in #SciCommChat by SciComm Club and the weekly “Follow Fridays,” was a lovely way to expose myself (and realize that I’m a bit younger than the other academicians). Then that led to another question. “How can I make an effective contribution to scicomm?”

STEM First! Gen. was built on the aims of interaction, support, and outreach, but was influenced by the alternatives to in-person communities: social networks. With several months of experience on the writing platform, Medium, I decided to pursue their publications, which organize articles and allow more than one contributor to write for the publication.

Medium is an open access blog platform for all writers and readers. You can find many STEM articles and publications for them, but what you may not find is just enough places where science communication itself can be appreciated. On Medium, where do you find scicomm advice and where can you learn about fields that use science communication? STEM First! Gen. covers those areas. When science communicators seek a larger audience or support from their peers, they usually reach out. We tweet, we post on LinkedIn, and we look out for opportunities. But sometimes we need more than a shout out. There are ideas to be shared, and stories to be heard.

Encouraging expression is important, but access is too.

The pandemic showed me alternative ways to socialize and discover more, so I dedicated this growing scicomm community to that. Social networks such as Twitter remove barriers between us and our audience

who use these platforms daily, whether they be peers in STEM or the general public.

As STEM First! Gen. is active, I try my best to make sure the work of science communicators and other STEAM enthusiasts is seen throughout. When we post on Twitter, anyone can see it. When we publish an article on Medium, anyone can read it. Why limit views to members only? Science communication is about outreach and removing barriers that interfere with our communication. So, as we put “STEM First,” we are always looking for ways to increase STEM engagement and raise awareness of the importance of effective science outreach to our audiences.

The sense of community on the platform raises my hopes for this initiative. Our contributors show us a part of themselves and their work every time they participate in STEM First! Gen.’s activities, and it’s great to see the support they get when we share their pieces. Retweets from our other participants, and claps from different Medium viewers across the platform assure that our friends are being recognized. I feel as if I found the best networks, but I can not stop at Medium and Twitter.

Science communicators are stretched across the globe. There are students and specialists who may want to endeavor in science communication, but may not know where to begin, like when I first learned of this field.

I now trek across the internet, planning to use easy access platforms for more SciComm engagement.

YouTube and Instagram proves to have potential, and so do places like Goodreads for book lovers and LinkedIn for a more professional taste. The more we reach, the more we all discover.

About

Monique is a pre-med student who takes pleasure in combining the arts and the sciences.

SciComm is one of Monique’s hobbies, and making friends in SciComm is another! STEM First! Gen. was created during the pandemic for science communicators to associate via their favourite social networks. The main hub is on Medium, where the team work as a publication open for science writers.

It is a tiny endeavor right now, but they’ve had so much fun learning and collaborating with different science communicators and SciComm teams, thanks to STEM First! Gen.

Links

Publication homepage: medium.com/stem-first-gen Twitter: @StemFirstGen More Outposts: linktr.ee/stemfirstgen © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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projects

Painting with Polarization with Professor Aaron Slepkov

Light is fascinating. The splitting of light through a prism demonstrates its variety of

wavelengths and constituent colours. Natural light can be transformed into polarized light, for example, by passing it through a special film that acts like a filter.

Types of filters called polarizers can be fitted to optical equipment like microscopes.

Birefringence is clearly seen under the microscope in the geology lab as students look at geological thin sections, but the bright, mosaic of colours seen is often mistakenly called ‘interference colours’, yet interference has little to do with this process, as Professor Aaron Slepkov tells us. Birefringence colour effects are due to the polarization of the light being altered through particular materials.

Above: “Stained Glass with Objects”. Colourless and transparent adhesive tape pieces are layered on a (20 cm X 25 cm) glass plate, illuminated by a white computer screen and photographed through polarized sunglasse. © Aaron Slepkov. © All rights reserved © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic I began working with a gifted highschool student who wanted some experience with optics research. When I saw Firstly, please tell us about your experience some examples of scotch-tape polarization images in optics and why you started your project on social media I realized that a fuller scientific “Painting with Polarization”. explanation of the phenomenon would make a great joint pandemic project. I had not expected it to To most of us, light itself is the opposite of a “material”. blossom into the rich exploration that it has become.

It has no weight; no substance. When I began my studies I saw light this way too. As a graduate physics Please explain the physical student interested in photonics I began to see that at underpinnings of the artistic colours that the cutting edge of technology light was being treated arise from birefringent materials. as a malleable and controllable substance. I coined the term “Lightsmith” as a vocational term for those of In principle, we perceive each distinct colour as a us who manipulate light as a substance from which range of wavelengths and intensities. A narrow range we can create new tools. For two decades I’ve been of intensities around 420 nm is perceived as blue, working as a Lightsmith, conducting research in various but also a broad range of wavelengths (white light) domains such as laser microscopy and spectroscopy, where red is filtered out can also appear as a kind atomic & molecular optics, and recently microwave of blue. Thus, each of the extremely wide range of biophotonics. colours that we can see can be obtained by filtering out portions of the white light spectrum.

Recently I’ve been teaching about the curious effects Light is linearly polarized when the direction of the of light polarization. Many fun demonstrations of the electric field (within the electro-magnetic wave) effects of polarization can make use of everyday is aligned in a particular direction. A birefringent household items such as polarized sunglasses, kitchen material has two (or three) perpendicular directions cling film, sugar syrup, or even ice. that each permits light polarized along it to travel Below: “Eclipse #1”, mounted for sunlight illumination and displayed affixed to a with a slightly different speed. In practice, this means window. This piece was created by cutting and layering three types of adhesive that if polarized light is incident along some direction tape on the glass plate from a simple 8” 10” picture frame. All layers fit within between these primary axes in a birefringent the plastic frame, and include, from back to front: kitchen parchment paper as a material, the polarization of the light will be rotated or diffuser, sheet polarizer with vertical polarization, glass, adhesive tape, and sheet polarizer with horizontal polarization. © Aaron Slepkov. All rights reserved. otherwise altered.

Q & A - Aaron Slepkov

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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So, a birefringent material modifies the polarization of the light. The amount to which the polarization is altered depends on the wavelength of the light, the thickness of the birefringent material, and the microscopic orientation of the birefringent material with respect to the incoming polarization. Finally, a polarizer is an optical gate that both sets the emerging polarization and blocks light depending on how mismatched the incoming polarization is. Light with co-aligned polarization to a polarizer is fully transmitted, light that is perpendicularly-polarized is fully blocked, and light in an intermediate state is attenuated to varying degrees. Polarization filtered colours arise when a birefringent layer—such as scotch tape, cellophane, or cling wrap—rotates the polarization of different wavelengths of the incident light such that a final polarizer acts as a filter that excises a portion of the spectrum, thereby transmitting a uniquely-modified spectrum which we perceive as a distinct colour. Adjacent regions with different birefringence lead to different colours.

How can one observe birefringence colours at home?

In principle all that’s needed is a polarized light source, a transparent sample with regions of varying birefringence, and a polarizer for observation. Most display screens such as a cellphone, a laptop, or a flatscreen TV monitor emit polarized light, so they are a good starting point. Alternatively, a sheet polarizer as the backing layer will polarize the light, so that you can even use sunlight as the lightsource.

A fun and simple sample can be made by layering strips of packaging tape in various thicknesses and orientations on to a glass plate (obtainable from a $2

picture frame). Most, but not all, household adhesive tapes are birefringent, as is kitchen cling film. Mixing different tape samples increases the range of colours that can be observed. The glass is non-birefringent but makes a convenient substrate for the tape. Passing the polarized light through the sample doesn’t lead to any observable colouration until observed through a final polarizer. Polarized driving sunglasses are very effective. Thus, with a white LCD screen and polarization sunglasses, you don’t need to purchase dedicated polarization film. However, for a permanent display that can be observed by a crowd, the birefringent sample needs to be sandwiched between polarizer film. The relative orientation of the three layers completely transforms the colour scheme!

When looking at geological thin sections under the microscope with polarization filters, the bright colours are often described as interference colours.

Why is this a misleading term?

While this phenomenon has been called interference colours for a century, I suspect that the misleading reference to interference has hindered a more widespread understanding of the underlying physics.

When the birefringent material displays continuous local variation in thickness and/or birefringence, the resulting pattern of colours is highly reminiscent of those seen in soap bubbles, oil slicks, and other thin film interference phenomena. In those examples the colours come about from constructive and destructive interference of multiple reflections at the interface of samples with thicknesses on the order of the wavelength of light. Tiny variation in the thickness of the film leads to different colours experiencing

Above: Observation angle and the effects of film thickness on transmitted colour. Piece titled “Several more circles after Kandisky”, transparent adhesive tape on glass plate (20 cm, 25 cm), illuminated by a white-background laptop screen with crossed-polarizer, and viewed from two different angles. Middle panels show a zoom-in region from the adjacent outer panels, highlighting colour differences. © Aaron Slepkov. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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complete interference and thus to different observed colours. The interference itself acts as a final filter for removing key wavelengths and creating colours. In the case of birefringence colours there is no interference to consider. All of the colours come from the filtering effect of the final polarizer. Therefore, I prefer to call this phenomenon polarization filtered colouration, but indeed it is identical to what has been known for a century as interference colours, and before that as chromatic polarization. Both phenomena are wonderful illustrations of the wave nature of light, but not of interference!

How did the artist Austine Wood Comarow utilize this phenomenon to create a range of creative pieces from small objects to installations?

Starting in the 1960’s several artists have explored polarization filtered colouration as a unique medium.

In the early days there was a lot of creative exploration

of dynamic birefringence and the kinetic aspects of how observed colours change with viewing position and polarization angle. But nobody has pioneered this medium like Austine Wood Comarow. Early on, Austine coined the term ‘pollage’—a portmanteau of polarization collage—and she has become synonymous with the artform. She studied the aethetic and scientific underpinnings of the technique in an MFA thesis in 1981—believing at the time that it was indeed rooted in interference effects—but has since taken the artform in wildly creative and expanded directions. Her early works used true cellophane film as the main birefringent sample, but have since expanded to other birefringent materials.

Over a career that spanned five decades, Austine’s pollage art has been featured in museums all over the world; from Epcot Center in Florida, to the Singapore Science Centre, and la CSI in Paris.

Her clever use of additional polarizer elements within the pollage can create a uniquely dynamic colour experience. Sadly, Austine died in 2020.

Final thoughts With a background in optics, Professor Aaron Slepkov exposes us to the hidden physical realm behind light and birefringence — what people commonly, but incorrectly call interference colours. It is the properties of light, when shone through a polarizing filter, that reveal a variety of wavelengths in a rainbow of colours.

By starting the project Painting with Polarization, Aaron continues to explore and share the physical underpinnings of these polarization based colours. Austin Wood Comarow was an established artist (who is now deceased), who really pioneered this art, and Aaron seeks to update the scientific explanations behind the phenomenon.

He has explained to us the physical processes behind the beautiful diversity of colours that we can see from birefringence. But we do not have to look down a polarizing microscope, we can produce impressive birefringence displays using everyday items and materials.

Bio

Associate Professor Aaron Slepkov holds a Canada Research Chair in the Physics of Biomaterials and leads The Slepkov Biophotonics Lab group at Trent University in Canada where researchers curiously investigate projects across the disciplines of Nonlinear Optical Microscopy, Physics Education Research, and Mad Science.

Links

Research group website: aaronslepkov.com Aaron’s Twitter: @aaronslepkov

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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photography

Jan van IJken J

an van IJken is a filmmaker and photographer from Leiden, the Netherlands, working at the interface of art and science. His work is about the secrets of nature, microscopy, embryology and human-animal relationships. At present, he is mainly working autonomously on long-term projects. As a photographer, he developed a strong eye for natural light, composition and detail.

Find out more

Website: www.janvanijken.com

Artwork

Planktonium – Short film (15min) and photo series about the unseen world of microscopic plankton. (above) © Jan van IJken 2021 - Planktonium. All rights reserved.

Chaoborus (phantom midge larva), zooplankton. Sample taken from a freshwater environment in the Netherlands. The photo was made by image stacking; combining many photos with different focal points to create one sharp image.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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gallery

Dana Simmons Bio

Dana Simmons holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Chicago, where she researched autism spectrum disorder and its connection to the cerebellum.

This is where she discovered her love for neuron art.

Dana now works as a medical writer in Washington DC, where she is thrilled to be part of a vibrant, dedicated team, collaborating on innovative and creative projects.

Find out more in this YouTube video.

Artwork Precipos

(right)

© Dana Simmons. All rights reserved.

This piece showcases 20 versions of a single Purkinje cell. These neurons are found in the cerebellum, a brain region that modulates balance, posture, and motor learning.

Dana studied how these neurons communicate with the neurons around them in autistic versus nonautistic mice.

She uses her art to highlight the beauty within the brain and to get people excited about science.

Links

Website: www.dana-simmons.com © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Science illustrations by SciGrafik Dmitry Shevela obtained his PhD (in chemistry) in 2008, from the Technical University of Berlin (Germany). After his two postdoctoral appointments he is currently working at the Umeå University (Sweden). In addition to his research activities, Dmitry is working as a science illustrator in his own company, SciGrafik (Sweden), which was founded in 2018. SciGrafik supports scientists and companies with professional illustrations for scientific articles, books, patents, proceedings, presentations, posters, manuals, grant applications and reports. The development and design of Educational Posters is one of Scigrafik’s specialties.

Artwork Educational Posters on Photosynthesis (left) © SciGrafik. All rights reserved.

A collage of Agrisera’s Educational Posters on Photosynthesis graphically designed by Dmitry in 2016-2021. These posters reflect the main recent research achievements in various fields of photosynthesis. All these posters were developed in collaboration with Prof.

Govindjee Govindjee from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and reviewed by many research experts.

Agrisera is a sponsor of the graphic design work, providing printing, and free distribution of the posters at numerous plant science-related conferences around the world. Dmitry designed the posters using CorelDRAW software.

Get in touch

Email: info@scigrafik.se Twitter: @SciGrafik © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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illustration

Digital art reveals cellular secrets with Marzia Munafò

Marzia Munafò is a molecular biologist currently studying inter-generational

inheritance in the mouse by analysing epigenetics - which is the study of how our behaviours and environment can change how genes work. She revisited her lifelong love of art during her PhD, while merging her scientific knowledge with her artistic and digital illustrative skills. Marzia’s digital SciArt is rather unconventional, in the unique, imaginative and metaphorical ways her images are presented.

Find out for yourself in the following pages!

Above: “Restriction of SARS-CoV-2 replication by targeting programmed −1 ribosomal frameshifting.”

A study published in PNAS identified Merafloxacin as a pan-betacoronavirus programmed -1 ribosomal frameshift inhibitor. In the illustration, ribosomes move like pieces on a board game (the viral ORF sequence) where Merafloxacin acts as a roadblock for translation.

© Marzia Munafò. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Q & A - Marzia Munafò Please tell us about how you got into molecular biology and about your current postdoctoral studies in inter-generational epigenetic inheritance in mammals.

I became fascinated with biology during middle school, when learning about Mendel’s laws of inheritance, but did not consider becoming a scientist until much later. After high school I decided to pursue a research career mainly because I sought to find a job that would fulfil my innate curiosity and passion for learning, and biology came as a somewhat natural choice. I didn’t know much about molecular biology back then, but I clearly remember getting hooked to it during my second year of uni while learning about transcription, gene regulation and microRNAs. I immediately fell in love with the topic and spent several years (from master to PhD) doing research in the field of RNA biology. I am incredibly fascinated by the molecular mechanisms that govern life inside the cell and this excitement transfers into my illustrations.

Having gained a solid background in RNA molecular biology, I wanted to switch gears for my postdoc and dive into something new. I am currently investigating inter-generational epigenetic inheritance in the mouse, which is an immensely fascinating topic.

The gametes transmit to the zygote much more than “just” DNA and we know very little about how this inherited non-genetic information can shape embryonic development. It also has very broad, long-term societal implications on our understanding of how parental environment can shape offspring fitness.

How did you get started creating science-inspired illustrations and what inspired you?

I’ve been drawing ever since I can remember and for quite some time I have been torn between a career in art or in science. I became interested in the science illustration world during my PhD, when I started to realise that I really enjoyed creating graphics for my figures and presentations and generally communicating my work visually. I also noticed that this was not a common feeling among fellow scientists and many were glad to outsource the graphical work.

So I started helping out colleagues and friends with their figures and then the opportunity came up to submit a creative cover proposal to the journal Genes & Development.

I also started illustrating for the University of Cambridge science magazine (BlueSci) and reaching out to professional illustrators asking for advice, until in 2020 I got my first external commission!

I can think of two main reasons that prompted me to start creating scienceinspired illustrations. On one hand the desire to make science more engaging and accessible, especially at a time in which scientists and the general public seem to live on two different planets. On the other hand, I really needed to find on outlet for

Above: “You shall not pass. Neutralizing antibodies as powerful allies in our fight against SARS-CoV2”. © Marzia Munafò. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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my creative self, which was getting a bit frustrated by the up-and-downs of experimental work. It was very important to have my own happy place to switch the brain off and recharge batteries. I think I like to imagine and reinterpret molecules and pathways in an unconventional way primarily because it gives me a unique perspective on science that is entirely different from the rigorous and schematic approach I have at work.

You cover a nice range of styles and formats, from very imaginative illustrations to graphical abstracts. What techniques and digital software do you use?

“I wanted something creative and different from the usual representations of splicing, so I came up with the idea of using glowing lamps to represent the nucleotide in its methylated vs unmethylated state.”

For creative illustrations I almost exclusively use Procreate on the iPad and do the final adjustments on Adobe Photoshop. For graphical abstracts and technical figures I use Adobe Illustrator.

Please discuss two of your favourite unconventional science illustrations. Why have you presented them this way and what do they represent?

Among my favourite illustrations from 2021 is the one on the repressive effect of RNA methylation on splicing.

It was a challenging one to design, since we wanted m6A to lead the scene, but at the same time we had to clearly depict its negative effect on splicing. I wanted something creative and different from the usual representations of splicing, so I came up with the idea of using glowing lamps to represent the nucleotide in its methylated vs unmethylated state.

Right: A study published in Cell shows that the m6A RNA modification inhibits splicing by blocking splicing factors binding to the 3’ acceptor site. When the 3’ splice site is unmethylated, the lamp glows bright thus attracting moths, here representing splice factors. When m6A is present, the dimly lit lamp isn’t “seen” anymore by the moths. © Marzia Munafò. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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In the illustration, when the 3’ splice site is unmethylated, the lamp glows bright thus attracting moths, representing splice factors.

I generally like drawing natural elements, so I thought of representing the process of neoantigen generation as “blooming flowers” on a tree.

When m6A is present, the dimly lit lamp isn’t “seen” anymore by the moths, indicating that factors such as U2AF35 cannot recognize the splice site anymore.

The repertoire of antigens shown on the surface of cancer cells (symbolised by the tree, as shown on the front cover of this magazine issue) stems from the pool of transcripts produced within the cell (the roots).

The second one represents the discovery of splicing modulation as a potential anti-cancer therapy.

Altered splicing in cancer cells can lead to the production of neoantigens which, once exposed on the cell surface, make the tumor readily recognizable by the immune system. This can be quite a dark, daunting theme (especially to non scientists) so I really wanted to use a positive imagery.

Final thoughts

When the tree is “fertilised” with a splicing modulator, splicing patterns are altered, hence its roots are overgrown and entangled, and this leads to the production of aberrant proteins (see front cover image). Some of these proteins bloom into neoantigens, bright “flowers” on the surface of cancer cells that can be recognised by the immune system and thus enhance the endogenous response against the tumour.

During Marzia Munafò’s PhD exploring RNA biology, she sought a relaxing outlet through the creation of figures and illustrative visuals for her scientific work, before branching out further and using her talent to provide informative graphics for other scientists.

While she is fueled by a fascination about molecular mechansims that are behind life and our cells, Marzia has always had a love for art, having drawn since she can remember. With her knowledge of molecular biology, she beautifully incorporates her artistic skills to create memorable digital SciArt. Through the enjoyment of the creative process, she is inspired to make science more engaging and accessible, since the disciplines can seem worlds apart these days.

Bio Dr. Marzia Munafò is a molecular biologist and also a scientific illustrator. She earned a PhD in medical sciences at the University of Cambridge (UK) and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In her free time, Marzia combines her scientific education with her passion for drawing in the creation of unconventional, science-inspired illustrations.

Links Email: Info.munafomarzia@gmail.com Website: www.munafomarzia.com Twitter and Instagram: @munafomarzia © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Life looks pretty cool close up Life looks pretty cool up close (below) Image taken by Olina Søyland Bru Scale bar = 10 μm. © Olina Søyland Bru. All rights reserved.

LifeUnderTheMicroscope is an Instagram account bridging science and art, spoken with a language and visual expression that aims to catch people’s interest. It simply shows people what stuff looks like up close under a microscope, with a description of what they see and a fun fact to make them more curious about our wonderful world.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

About

Olina Søyland Bru is a creative and aspiring biologist from Norway. With a background in communications and a newfound love for biology, Olina has a desire to inspire people to appreciate the world around us more.

With the belief that we all would take better care of this planet if we were a bit more curious and got a deeper understanding of how complex and fascinating all life on Earth is - Olina’s instagram project encourages people to look a little closer.

Contact

Instagram: @LifeUnderTheMicroscope

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Julia A Licholai The Brain Embroidered (below) © Julia A Licholai. All rights reserved.

The Brain Embroidered (2020) depicts a human nervous system through bright threads against a black cloth background.

The nerves extending from the spinal cord are stylized into swirles, adding to the repeating patterns of circles.

This is Julia’s third embroidery project, which she started to help train her eye to use colours without blending for painting.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

About

Julia is a neurobiology graduate student who shares her love of science through art.

Her pieces range from digital paintings to acrylic on canvas to embroideries, and they often revolve around a scientific theme. Julia hopes that her science-inspired art will motivate others to explore STEM. She currently lives near DC with her girlfriend and two cats.

Contact

Website: www.paintbrains.com Instagram: @paint.brains

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© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Artist interview

Creating new colours from plant material with Lorenzo Li Greci

W

hile working as a biotechnology research scientist, Lorenzo Li Greci was inspired to start creating artwork out of his own lignin based dyes. Lignin is a key component making up plant material, and so, is biodegradable. This contrasts with the largely petroleum based plastic products we see all around us today. Lignin offers untapped potential for a world that is shifting to a sustainable future.

His background in genetics and optics inspires his art project, where he creates new colours using lignin - a key component of plant material. He experiments with this new palette of colours to see how they adapt on materials such as canvas and clay, in order to make new visual experiences to share with the world, as we can see in the following pages.

Above: Lignin glazed stoneware”. © Lorenzo Li Greci. Photo Credit: Kamila Śladowska. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Q & A - Lorenzo Li Greci From studying genetics, how did you come to start developing colours and materials in the laboratory?

The two groups (genetics and optics) have a lot of things in common and they are not necessary two separate fields. Genetic studies are often molecular investigations that use biochemical dyes to identify and quantify cellular features and gene expression.

Fluorescent reporter systems work with coloured light to describe cellular or molecular interactions.

Sometimes I work with colours at molecular level, other times I move in a bigger dimension. I like to create new colours or new colour applications. Inspired by the chemistry and the physics of the colours, I have decided to create and apply a new lignin-based colour palette and I was positively surprised about the results and the public interest upon this research. I know the physical and chemical properties of the compounds I use to generate new colour: density, hardness, melting point, toxicity, solubility, and I feel confident to use them with precautions to generate new visual experiences.

I was curious to experiment with new colours, following different directions that have never been presented to the public before. I felt like there was a need to invite these instruments of science in visual art territories and present them to the public in a special way.

Why is lignin research so important today, particularly with a growing interest in the circular economy?

To ensure ecological sustainability the economy must change or provide paradigmatic shifts. One of the options is the circular economy that extends the lifetime of raw materials. Lignin is produced

from recycled papers, and it is part of the circular economy’s processes. To protect biodiversity, an eco-sustainable approach is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and natural resources, therefore, we need new discoveries and technologies that allow us to reintroduce waste materials in our daily life.

Lignin is produced in bioreactors through the fermentation of recycled paper and its number of applications are growing every year. Lignin research is focused on the valorization of this relatively new material to understand and discover any new possible and usable applications, including ways to use lignin in everyday life so that they may replace plastic materials that are not biodegradable.

What materials and methods are needed to achieve different colours from lignin?

First, you need lignin. One can either purchase it from the industrial sector or build a bioreactor at home (which is much more complicated).

You caould even look around the world for university or academic research teams that are involved in lignin research and ask to collaborate with them.

Lignin’s natural colour is brown, and it might range very broadly from light brown to dark brown depending on the starting materials, fermentation, and post-fermentation processes. Old methods for colour formulation starting from the pigment are applicable. Lignin is highly soluble in certain conditions; therefore, liquid lignin water solutions are able to be used as a watercolour technique (as if you would use liquid wood.)

In addition, I start to create my own colour formulations by simply look at the chemical structures of each compound I use and with a basic understanding of physical

Above: Figure in Lignin by Lorenzo Li Greci. Lignin on recycled paper. © Lorenzo Li Greci 2021. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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and chemical knowledge I was trying to predict how lignin could interact or react with other chemical compounds in certain conditions to generate outcomes on the canvases or ceramics samples.

Methods are simply physical applications, with or without brush works, I can sometimes boil the lignin to concentrate it, for example, or add iron oxide or others salts to change its hues.

Please discuss a few of your art pieces created with lignin.

The first was simply a drawing on recycled paper presented at Venice for an international fair of contemporary art focused on the themes of identities, relationship between man, society, and contemporary cities (see image on previous page, Figure in Lignin).

After that I moved to canvases, and I started to use the lignin through vertical strokes only to generate continuously uniform and defined patterns by reducing the variables associated with the paintings

process and get to know the material better.

I call them cascades because the whole process, and sometime also the outcome, reminds me of waterfalls made of lignin (see image below, Lignin study). I wanted also to reproduce tree bark simulation on canvases, since lignin in the most abundant compound of the tree structural tissue and for this I use vacuum driven and free energy physical applications (see the image Lignin Cascade on the next page).

Sometimes I do not use the brush, other times, instead, if I focus on figurative art representations, I use the brush and I try to control the lignin applications as much as I can.

Taking a ceramics course, you applied lignin to stoneware clay. What is the potential for lignin to be applied to different materials?

Its potential, as well as its limitation, are described by its chemical structure and physical characteristics.

Above: Lignin study, Lorenzo Li Greci 2021. Lignin on recycled paper. © Lorenzo Li Greci. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Lignin can adapt on different media, but it is up to the artist to understand the best way to ensure the quality of the new product over time. My lignin paintings are sensitive to water, therefore, I moved toward ceramics to overcome this issue.

With ceramics, the whole artistic process is less predictable because of the firing process. Inside the kiln small changes in the microenvironments might result in drastic and unexpected results which I also

learnt how to appreciate them. More precisely, I am using lignin crystals in glaze formulations starting from my ceramic teacher’s glaze recipes.

We have seen the lignin behave very differently from keeping its original colour to changing it completely, or even disappearing or becoming transparent, like glass. We are still trying to figure it out why lignin does that inside the kiln. (See image Lignin Glazed Stoneware.”)

Final thoughts Using his research knowledge in biotechnology, Lorenzo has successfully developed a new lignin-based colour palette. His art project is driven by the knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the compounds that generate each colour. Constantly learning, Lorenzo took a ceramics course to see how lignin applies to stoneware clay. Applying the lignin based dyes to different materials is a technical, experimental process, which he and his collaborators are still exploring. See his website to find out what happens next.

Below: Lignin Cascade 2, Lignin on canvas. © Lorenzo Li Greci. All rights reserved.

Bio

Lorenzo Li Greci has a master’s degree in science and is currently working as a biotechnology research scientist in Finland.

Links Website: https://www.lorenzoligreci.com/

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Artist interview

Projecting the beauty of bacteria with designer Caron Ang

Having trained as a gemmologist, Caron Ang

brings together skills in jewellery and metalwork, while being inspired by scientific elements in her detailed artwork.

She takes on a broad spectrum of mediums, not just in metalwork but photography and performance art. We can see here some striking examples of the use of projection in her photography for the Symbiosis project, to open our eyes to the often overloooked beauty and biological importance of bacteria.

Above: Monera Virga. © Caron Ang. All rights reserved.

Left: Monera Caerulum. © Caron Ang. All rights reserved.

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Q & A - Caron Ang Please tell us about your background in art & design. What are your favourite mediums?

My main discipline is jewellery making, having done my bachelor’s degree in jewellery and metalwork in Sheffield, UK. Even though I’m actively involved in arts, I have always been drawn to the medical aesthetic and I love to dabble with scientific elements. Besides being an artist, I’m also a trained gemmologist and I’ve spent two years in the industry before deciding to pursue an MFA to develop my own practice.

My fascination with intertwining art and science along with my experience as gemmologist has undoubtedly shaped my practice and influenced my perspective of the world. For instance, after countless hours of studying gemstones using a microscope to see the finer inclusions (foreign material trapped in gemstones) that goes unnoticed to the naked eye, I was able

to utilise that experience to discover similarities between the microscopic world of bacteria and the microscopic world of gemstones. When I observed my bacterial specimens, I noticed a lot of the patterns that the bacteria grew can easily be found in gemstones which is remarkable.

While previously I only considered metal as my medium to make jewellery, my practice-based approach led me to expand beyond a jewellery making discipline and crossing into other fields like microbiology, performance art and photography.

It is very enriching because it allows me to see and understand things from a different viewpoint.

My favourite medium to use is definitely projection because it allows me create visually striking photos.

Why did you start the project Symbiosis?

Anatomical themes are constantly a feature in my work and my project explores the fascinating microworld of bacteria. As a person, I am mindful Below, left: Monera Interiorem. © Caron Ang. All rights reserved.

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The utilisation of something miniscule, unseeable and untouchable makes for a unique material to work with. It only seems natural to make use of microbes considering how they are continually in our surroundings and how we benefit from their As a jewellery maker, I am drawn to minute details in the hard work within our bodies. They are essentially petri dish made visible to the naked eye of what usually a part of us. Through that, I hope to instil within people an appreciation for the symbiotic goes unnoticed in our immediate surroundings and relationship we share with the microscopic even on our bodies. In essence, I combined these two aspects of myself as I conducted a series of experiments creatures as well as their lesser seen beauty. through growing bacteria which resulted in Symbiosis. of my health and cleanliness, even if it means washing my hands every so often while working, which is a handy trait when it comes to handling specimens and inoculating bacteria to prevent contamination.

The purpose of Symbiosis is to reframe people’s perspective of bacteria, which is usually negative.

Bacteria, the world’s oldest living organisms, are usually incorrectly assumed to be harmful and disgusting by the general public.

In addition to that, Symbiosis is also created to question people’s notion of jewellery through an artistic investigation of bacteria.

Please discuss some pieces you’ve shared with us and what they represent.

Through my learning process, I was granted opportunities to incorporate microbiology, photography and performance art into my practice. By having a holistic approach, I was able to capture and portray the beauty of bacteria in a unique way.

Below, left: Monera Rosea. © Caron Ang. All rights reserved.

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By growing bacteria and then projecting them onto the soft curves of the body, I strive to show their beauty, a side that is hardly seen, in harmony with us.

The projection also explores the vulnerability of have something so small and unnoticeable magnified and then projected on bare skin, enforcing the notion that there is no barrier between us and them. Interestingly, certain projections on bare skin do give a different effect. While some can resemble galaxies and look alien, some are reminiscent of tattoos.

I also find that with each photo, I developed a temporary identity, a feeling that is akin to being the face of bacteria. At one point, I was scrutinising every facial expression in the photo and I eventually settled on neutral and peaceful expressions to better reflect the harmonious relationship we share with bacteria.

With your projects, how have you adapted to the challenges of the past two years and what are your next plans in 2022?

Over the course of two years, my project has seen many changes through my continuous experimentation but it was not always a smooth sailing journey. When the pandemic first hit there were many restrictions in everyday and academic life.

Spending a lot of time in my tiny room in the student halls allowed me to think about my concept in depth.

Wearability was always an issue for me in the initial stages as I have always envisioned the outcome of Symbiosis to be wearable.

As I progressed, it became less about making something wearable and more about showing the lesser seen beauty of bacteria in harmony with the body. This also formed the incorporeal nature of Symbiosis as the projections themselves are just an illusion. In place of creating tangible objects, I chose to curate a series of photos.

As jewellery refers to ornamentation on the body, wearability should arguably not be a deciding factor for whether an object is jewellery, no matter if its tangible or not. With everything going online during the pandemic, the digital photos can be easily shared with the wider world.

Symbiosis has ignited an interest in the emerging design movement called biodesign where artists, scientists and designers integrate organic processes and materials into the creation of buildings, products and clothing. I hope to be a part of this movement through my desire to rework how we view bacteria.

Final thoughts As an experimental artist inspired by nature and science, Caron Ang started the project Symbiosis to present a fresh perspective of bacteria to the public eye. The key underlying message is that bacteria is not purely harmful, but useful and essential in life’s intricate ecosystems.

By projecting the bacteria onto human bodies, she reminds us abaout how bacteria are an essential part of us and the planet.

Bio

Links

Caron Ang is a Malaysian designer who has recently graduated from Ulster University with an MFA in Design. Having worked exclusively with metal previously, Caron’s practice has branched out to include other disciplines like photography, performance art and a little bit of microbiology which allows her a fluid approach. Caron is also a trained gemmologist and has spent time using a microscope to authenticate gems, which inspired her to seek out miniscule details in everyday life and to magnify them.

Instagram: @caronangdesign

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Artist interview

Brass Rabbit gives a voice to society’s hidden workers Beginning a journey into documentary work from a young age, Brass Rabbit

combined a love for photography with story telling about the true lives of those who are often overlooked by popular media. Taking an unbiased approach has been an underyling value during this work, resulting photographs and dialogues that have been exhibited in galleries in the US and beyond.

Brass Rabbit’s latest project The Greyscale Economics Project openly shares stories and details about those working in non-traditional economies.

The pandemic brought various challenges to not only the artist, but the subjects being interviewed, we find out why here.

Above: Blank cards used to create replicas of debit or credit cards from information purchased online or collected in person. Greyscale Economics Project, Phase 1. © Brass Rabbit. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Below: Cleaning products used in residential and commercial cleaning. Greyscale Economics Project, Phase 1. © Brass Rabbit. All rights reserved.

Q & A - Brass Rabbit How did you first get into documentary photography?

I had the privilege of being introduced to photography by my father and sort of fell into the world of documentary work. I essentially started shooting what I had around me when I was a teenager. I then developed an interest in the concept of “work” and what I now call “nontraditional economies.”

I began working with individuals who participated in the drug trade and it slowly took off from there, much of this early work was pretty unrefined but during this time I began to form my belief in and understanding of non-biased reporting and ethical documentation. These ideas have become integral to everything I do now, from my project’s conceptualisation to how they are carried out and described.

Where have your works been exhibited to the public? Did the pandemic affect the way you present your art?

My work has been exhibited in galleries, public installations and museums in the United States and abroad. Although exhibiting hasn’t been a major focus in my career so far, I’m currently working on showing more in the hopes of increasing each project’s reach. The pandemic had a massive effect on how I make my work but it affected the people I work with far more. I had to quickly shift my focus for the Greyscale Economics Project’s data collection to solely digital outreach when things first started shutting down, which had its own set of unique challenges and benefits. More pressing was that many sectors applicable for the project were hit extraordinarily hard, which has had severely damaging effects for many people who already had little protection or safety net.

The sudden instability and other pressures rightfully resulted in lots of cancelling, rescheduling and much more sparse conversations with participants. I just had someone reach back out to me yesterday who I first started a conversation with in March of 2020. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Above: Genesis - iron, sound. © Silja Selonen. All rights reserved.

“The purpose of my work isn’t to have any defined effect or goal, it’s meant to provide hard information for viewers to form their own perspectives.”

In what ways do you reveal hard truths about society and if applicable, our environment?

In much of my work, especially my large scale projects, I collect information from and conduct research on first person sources. I facilitate anonymous interviews and create surveys that ask carefully designed questions on work habits, personal finance, social expectation, experienced bias and more.

Although this information might not seem like the most exciting or moving, the responses they receive are exceptionally stirring, and provide a really intimate look into a person’s life and story.

Some of what is revealed is hard to swallow truth, and realities, although each viewer takes away something different. But the purpose of my work isn’t to have any defined effect or goal, it’s meant to provide hard information for viewers to form their own perspectives. p52

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Tell us about why you started the Greyscale Economics Project and how you combine story-telling, visuals and data from members of non-traditional economies.

I started the Greyscale Economics Project about 5 years ago with an interest in sharing the first person perspectives I’d been moved by while working in documentary photography. The project has four phases, each with different components that focus on collecting data, interviewing and photographing members of non-traditional economies. I collect data from participants in two main ways, through anonymous surveying and anonymous interviewing.

I provide digital and hardcopy surveys in English and Spanish that ask questions, like “How many hours do you typically work?”, “Do you have any dependents?” and “How much do you make annually from this work alone?” I conduct interviews using a separate set of questions via private chats, phone or Facetime calls and in person meetings.

I transcribe each question’s response in real time and pull quotes or stories from each conversation to provide a more in-depth and personal perspective.

I use photography to pull the viewer in, each phase of the project features a different photographic focus.

The 1st phase examined objects participants used in their day to day work, the 2nd phase features a combination of new work objects and places of work, the 3rd will feature images of participants in their working environments and the fourth will culminate in book combing all of the pre-existing phases with analyzed data and new photographic pieces.

All collected information will be published in a free online database that will update with new responses live. The surveys and database will not be taken down even after the completion of the project so the information can grow and change with time.

Final thoughts Brass Rabbit courageously reveals the stories of those working in nontraditional economies through The Greyscale Economics Project, where all information collected is available freely. Like the rest of Brass Rabbit’s work, this does not only involve snapping meaningful photos. Data collection and research are significant parts of the process, while running surveys and doing anonymous interviews with diverse individuals.

Bio

Links

Brass Rabbit is a US based artist and documentary photographer living and working in Trenton, NJ. Brass Rabbit got her start in documentary photography capturing the lives of gang members and other individuals from illicit economies along the east coast.

Website: www.brass-rabbit.com

Her work focuses on societal expectations and economic inequality by combining photography and data collection. She uses a creative pseudonym to safely connect with the populations that drive much of her work and practice.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Instagram: @BrassRabbitArt Greyscale Economics Surveys English Work Data Survey https://forms.gle/gUrWBfD9UMXRVNnN74 Spanish Work Data Survey https://forms.gle/jhKVeCKXmR1ZX2ZW6 p53

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Uli Ap Uli Ap is a London-based trans-disciplinary

artist with a background in fine art, new media art, architecture, fiction writing and journalism, who critically investigates technology and its relationship with society and science.

Ap creates disorienting interactive installations, where virtual and physical experiences merge and alter participants’ mental states, spatial and immersive video-audio environments to transfer physical experiences through digital realms, destabilising performances to question a post-human condition, and AI–VR–BCI– Robotics situations.

Winner of Best Short: Audience Award - Yellow Alienation No.1 by Uli Ap, New York Short Film Festival, 2021.

Uli Ap lives and works all over the globe.

Extensive exhibitions and residencies include the British School in Rome, International Artist-in-Residence Programme in Aso Japan, the Kim Fielding Award for experimental arts and ‘Artificial Intelligence of Virtual Reality’ featuring the ‘Brain AI’ at the Ambika P3 in London.

Find out more at: www.uliap.art

Alienation Project is a trilogy: ‘Yellow Alienation’, ‘Orange Alienation’ and ‘Silver Alienation’. ‘Yellow Alienation No.1’ is an exploration of awakening and the sensation of having a body.

‘Yellow Alienation No.2’ is an AI generated film about the Alien AI life on Earth during their mission. ‘Grassula: The Plant from Mars’ Alien AI (below) is a sketch for the Alienation Project. Alien AI appears at the New © Uli Ap. All rights reserved.

York Short Film Festival, Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab and Techspressionism in New York, Ars Electronica Festival, Digital Artist Residency in London and Coaxial Arts in Los The Alien AI is a synthetic hybrid character, constantly Angeles; where the Alien AI talks to their body part in a shape transforming, morphing, defragmenting, shape-shifting, with an of gas in the Alienation Land. Alien AI is a transformation of the identity that is fluid. They live in a situation of no borders and cReature that was born at the Crypt@St.Marks St.Mark’s Church no frontiers. The Alien AI is neither alien nor a form of Artificial Kennington in London at the nine interconnected immersive Intelligence or a creature, but all and none of them at the same site-specific installations ‘That Side Where Real Is’, ‘Vertical time. In the Alienation Land, the Alien AI is gas. This Alienation Project is a project about being different. It explores the Alienation Immersion’ of which made five highlights of the Art Licks Weekend at the Evening Standard. The cReature Film was screened at the Factor as a force that can move a society forward but is controlled and restricted from its action by human powers.

Whitechapel Gallery.

Artwork

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Frankenflora Katrina Vera Wong is an artist, writer and editor. Learning from literature, botany, herbaria, and ikebana, she makes flowers called Frankenflora — imagined hybrids that are pieced together from parts of dried or pressed plants.

Her Frankenflora have been exhibited in Vancouver, BC, at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Science World, and the VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Artwork

Frankenflora mugungdea

© 2021 Katrina Vera Wong. All rights reserved.

(below)

F. mugungdea — imagined for hostile, acidic, and hot environments — was created as a tribute to Asian women. Its form is based on Hibiscus syriacus (or mugunghwa), which is highly tolerant of air pollution, heat, humidity, and drought, and prefers slightly acidic soil.

It’s made from parts of the following plants: • Oncidium sp. reminiscent of the dancers of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

• Muscari sp. associated with the earth goddess Demeter.

Leucophyta brownii tiny silver-grey leaves reflect sunlight and retain water.

• • Scabiosa sp. nectar-rich and attractive to insect pollinators.

© NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

Links Website: www.furiebeckite.com Instagram: @furiebeckite

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Gerardo La Porta Gerardo La Porta is a self-taught artist, he likes to capture the beauty in any

object and places. He uses paint to capture diverse arrangements that allow him to express different concepts he has. His works show radiant colours and a sense of order through different aspects of view, all generating a positive atmosphere.

Artwork Scilla and her Mermaid, (right) © Gerardo La Porta.

All rights reserved.

Scilla and her Mermaid, inspired by history, legends and nature, as you can see in this picture, with the rocky headland by the sea, and the girl walking by during a spectacular sunset.

Links Instagram: @GilaPorta

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Written Word

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Written Word thought-notes

How the Aesthetics of Disaster Engulfs Climate Discourse

By Jesús Muñoz Morcillo

In the very first week after a dynamic brush fire

broke out in October 2019 near the Getty Center in Los Angeles, more than one hundred videos were uploaded to YouTube. News, opinions, testimonies, explanatory videos, and even gaming videos spread like wildfire on YouTube, competing for an audience. Some of these videos suggested that the fire would destroy one of the most important and iconic art institutions in California, the Getty Center, after which the fire was named, even though the Getty was never actually at risk. This manifold material mirrors how different communication cultures share the most influential online video platform, YouTube, as well as specific aesthetics and narratives related to the medium itself and the very topic of a California brush fire.

On the night of October 28, 2019, a brush fire started in the suburban neighborhood of Brentwood, in Los Angeles.

The fire lasted eight days, until its total containment on November 5, destroying 745 acres (301 hectares), burning down ten houses, and leaving five firefighters injured. It wasn’t as devastating as previous wildfires, such as the The present article focuses on how wildfire 2017 Skirball Fire (named after the Skirball Cultural Center, is mediatized as a narrative of disaster by which is also located in Los Angeles) or the extremely organisations and individuals through sharing destructive 2018 Woolsey Fire, but it still became a spectacular images, spreading founded and global media event for at least one week. Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD 2019) investigators determined unfounded fears, and focusing on individual that “[t]he [Getty] fire was deemed an accidental start, stories, anecdotes, and ephemeral distractions, caused by a tree branch that broke off and subsequently without any substantial contribution to long-term landed in nearby power lines during high wind conditions. environmental debates. The critical question This errant tree branch caused the sparking and arcing is: Why do popular aesthetics and narratives of of power lines, igniting nearby brush. All power lines on the pole remained intact.” This was determined to be disaster fail to contribute to long-term ecological the “preliminary cause of the fire by using burn patterns, debates? witness statements, and physical evidence.” (LAFD 2019) The visual evidence that circulated in the media was a A preliminary content analysis focusing on the dashcam video record showing the electrical arc that Californian cultural context shows that the Getty Fire supposedly started everything (ABC7 2019a; ABC10 News had all the ingredients to become a global story but— 2019; Los Angeles Times 2019). But despite this tempting at least in the most popular media—without sparking visual proof of simple causality, the real origin of the Getty knowledge-based ecological debates. In comparison, Fire was not a single event. The LAFD description above other wildfires with a minor degree of politicization have points to an accidental start that occurred in combination with high wind conditions. However, wildfires in California been mediated with a higher degree of knowledgehave become more common in the last decade, largely based public engagement. On a theoretical level, this due to climate change. The conditions that contribute to article poses the thesis that wildfires trigger different media reactions and narratives depending on cultural, wildfires are created by a combination of factors. Since, in the public discourse, the nature and origins of wildfires

political, and historical specifics. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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Written Word thought-notes tend to be over-simplified, with the fires themselves being considered as the results of isolated and accidental events, ignorance often paves the way for misinformation and politization. In several ill-informed tweets, former US President Donald Trump blamed firefighters and California authorities for supposedly poor forest management (tweets from November 10 and 11, 2019). Leverkus et al.

(2020) have pleaded for a science-based public debate that avoids the biased opinions of politicians, since those opinions often only contribute to further misinformation.

There is much more scientific knowledge stored about the origins of wildfires, their behavior, and their ecological consequences than the public comes to know about through the most popular media—and especially through new media. As Leverkus et al. mention, major wildfires, such as the Yellowstone fires of 1988 or the southern Australian fires of 2009, have produced “a vast body of knowledge that politicians are disregarding in favor of [unfounded] opinions” (Leverkus et al. 2020, p. 417).

Scholar Olivia Lazard points out that major fires on the West Coast of the US are also the result of ecological disintegration in the Amazon (Lazard 2020).

which wildfires are embedded. In this analysis, historical and cultural specifics are taken into account, as are aesthetics, and some theoretical remarks pertaining to media are made. The typological approach focuses on the deduction of categories depending on the aesthetics and semiotics of the videos under analysis. This mixed method allows for a deep, structured interpretation of the selected material, which paves the way for further content analyses and even for quantitative analyses.

Global factors are obviously contributing to these unprecedented wildfires, but most fires are still regarded as purely local events. We could say, in Aristotelian terms, that wildfires are not a matter of accident but of substance, and I would add that wildfires belong to an ontological category that common people instinctively refuse to understand, which leads to a noxious normalization of a global issue by means of mental vagueness. Wildfires are unavoidable, but their increased destructive power is due to factors related to human agency in our present geological era, which is now widely known as the Anthropocene (Crutzen/Stoermer 2000; see also Leinfelder/Crutzen 2012). The cultural history of wildfires in California, as written by Stephen Pyne (2015), reveals how little the general public knows about the agency of this natural force. Wildfires can be considered almost an ontological peculiarity of California and many other regions of the world. But can we say that the public is being informed about the difference between the “good” agency of fire and the catastrophic consequences of unprecedented—but meanwhile common—wildfires for vegetation, animals, humans, and the planetary ecosystem? Isn’t an event with global impact, such as the Getty Fire, a suitable starting point for talking about longterm ecological issues in popular media? The following overview provides some insight into these questions.

Results

Methodology

For the present preliminary research, the author relies partly on a free hermeneutical approach and partly on a typological analysis of the first 100 videos published after the Getty Fire broke out on the evening of October 29, 2019. Free hermeneutics are needed to enhance our knowledge about the complex cultural context within © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

The video corpus was created by searching the keyword “Getty Fire” on YouTube—i.e., the label mass media applied to the wildfire in question—and then sorting the findings in chronological order. The browser used for retrieving the needed data was Chrome. All cache data were deleted prior to starting the search function. At the time of retrieving the data, the author was in Germany. In this brief research report, only the videos referenced in the paper have been added to the bibliography. For data consistency, only the author of this paper was involved in the hermeneutical analysis of the video material (on YouTube) and new media material (e.g., Tweets).

Most videos produced and uploaded to the internet immediately after the fire broke out can be put into the following categories: official reports; short-term investigative journalism; frontline videos; evacuation stories; series of anecdotal moments; sequences of infernal images as first-person testimonials (i.e., “I was there too” videos); and (after the main danger was over) even entertainment or virtual action videos. Let me focus on the first four, which predominate by far, before turning to those action-based, anecdotal, and entertainment videos that appeal to an emotional level of understanding.

Official Reports

While the aesthetics of these videos depends on multiple factors, one thing is certain: The choices pertaining to setting and scenery are interesting decisions related to the media preferences of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office.

The emergency setting, with a dynamic informational flow shot in exterior, evokes the idea that some kind of heroic action is taking place. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti clearly has suitable rooms for organizing a press conference at the LA City Hall, yet he decided, as a supportive and more impressive media gesture, to be near the firefighters (e.g., ABC10 2019b, 2019c; NBCLA 2019) and the people being evacuated. In this sense, the specific locations were fire stations and evacuation centers. Following the main argument of Marvin Carlson (1999, p. 6) concerning the placement of theaters in cities, locations that display the semiotic of the city “as a text created by human beings in space, spoken by and speaking to those who inhabit it, move through it and observe it” can be considered “places of performance.” The evacuation centers, the fire station, or the presence of firefighters and officials in the background p59

Written Word thought-notes all create a space of emergency detached from any local signature, almost a non-place (“non-lieu”), in the words of Marc Augé, similar to an airport or a train station. The place where emergency is negotiated is detached from any anthropological or cultural concerns beyond the specific idea of human action against the elements.

Short Investigative Journalism

Even if the videos in this category are not very elaborate, most of them provide testimonials or visual proof of how a broken branch that landed on the electrical power lines could have started the fire (cf. ABC7 2019a; ABC10 News 2019; KTLA 2019; Los Angeles Times 2019). The structure of such videos is quite simple. It consists of an appealing title that already points to the possible origins of the brush fire, as well as a narrated sequence with a brief exposition as a point of attack that raises the primary and most simplified question: How did the fire start? Even if several factors are mentioned, the visual proof recorded by a dashcam that seems to show a sparking event on the roadside becomes the central motif or even the climax of evidence as an entity constructed in those YouTube videos. The sequence is repeated several times in slow motion to provide ample evidence. However, the recorded event is a singular and insufficient explanation that inadvertently casts aside the idea that the brush fire was avoidable. The audience seems to be accustomed to simplified narratives of disaster, as we can infer from firefighting films—from Fire! (1901) to Brave are the Fallen (2020)—, where the primary plot is devoted to rescue activities or the personal fates of individuals. Journalistic media produce similar narratives, as cultural mirrors of the society they belong to, making it difficult to escape the vicious circle of perception as narration.

Frontline and Aftermath Videos

Local broadcasters uploaded some videos interviewing people who tried to save their homes. Some of those videos consist of a montage of partly or fully burnt houses and short interviews with homeowners after the danger had almost passed. However, there is also raw material showing the fire’s violence (e.g., ABC7 2019b; ABC10 2019a; CBS Los Angeles 2019a). This type of video creates a dense narrative about upper-class Angelenos’ efforts to save their homes, providing solid dramatic momentum, even if we do not have enough information from the published videos to assume that this extreme situation is one that happens very often.

Evacuation Stories

One interesting point that this great variety of media comes close to omitting entirely is that the evacuation center was only used by a few people during the fire. This was due to the aboveaverage level of wealth of most Brentwood residents. Only a small number of people ever needed to spend the night in the improvised shelter that was set up. Under such circumstances, reporters from different broadcasting companies looked for stories that fulfilled the social expectations of a wildfire with evacuated individuals, families with children, and concerned citizens (CBS Los Angeles 2019b, 2019c, 2019d). Several © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

broadcasters, such as KABC, CBSN, or ABC7, did many interviews, but only aired a few specific stories.

Among the videos shot at the Brentwood Evacuation Center, one is particularly significant (CBS Los Angeles 2019b): two older adults from the same neighborhood were filmed together sitting and waiting. One of them narrated the first moments of the fire in a very vivid way, including how firefighters evacuated her and her friend in the middle of the night, with no time to take even a small bag with them. They were indeed the most vulnerable persons affected by the evacuation, and their situation would have been an excellent starting point for a debate about climate refugees’ social and generational differences in a rich country.

However, such stories stopped being produced and propagated almost immediately after they were broadcast.

Anecdotal Stories and Entertainment

One example of an anecdotal story is the CBS video of a man walking along the I-405 freeway during the fire (CBS Los Angeles 2019e). According to the comments to this video, the surrealistic scene was sometimes considered a symbol of boldness, and at other times was viewed as representing an endemic lack of perception of an imminent danger.

A rare but significant category within this context is the production of action or entertainment videos by YouTubers. The YouTuber named GMAntonZ created a gaming narrative based on a GTA video game mod to virtual fight the flames of the Getty Fire from his computer (GMAntonZ 2019).

Absence of Science Communicators

Why were science communicators with an eco-critical perspective missing? Wasn’t the Getty Fire, like other previous brush fires in California, a global event worth talking about? Or were there not enough popular science communicators on YouTube to take a position at the time? The answer may lay in the velocity of short-video production and the storytelling culture that rules even science communication video production (Muñoz Morcillo et al. 2016, 2019). But what about the role of the specific culture and history of California?

Let’s take a closer look at this in the concluding discussion section.

Discussion

In the videos published on YouTube after the Getty Fire broke out, there are almost no references to climate change issues, just as there is almost no self-reflective public engagement or critical dialogue. As the fire devastated mountain vegetation at high speed, media producers propagated a large variety of emergency narratives, yet without devoting any time to deep reflection or targeted discussions about the meaning p60

Written Word thought-notes and the origins of what was happening. The reason behind this urgent attitude seems to be the very narrative and dynamic nature of ephemeral, appealing, and snippy new media, especially regarding short web videos. Indeed, the mimetic momentum of the short medium à la McLuhan (“the medium is the message”) is entangled in a superordinate, inertial structure of social and aesthetic expectations.

A symptomatic example of this is the spontaneous creation of a benevolent and ingenious web of reactions to celebrity tweets. “The Getty Art is in danger” was one of the common—and unfounded—throw-away topics that circulated at that time, but tweets by Arnold Schwarzenegger and LeBron James, both prominent residents of Brentwood, also became, within seconds, viral initiators of meta-stories of emergency. Schwarzenegger, who had to evacuate at 3:30 am, exhorted his neighbors to leave their homes as well, to follow instructions, and to not “screw around” (Arnold@Schwarzenegger 2019).

Many responses to his tweet are film quotations or evoke situations from his most famous movies: “Come with me if you want to live” (Terminator 2); “Do it now” and “I’ll be back” (The Terminator); “Get to the choppa” (Predator); “Astalavista” [sic!] (Terminator 2); and also, “Interesting. You told firemen to ‘get out’ in Terminator 3.” This effort at saying something ingenious or amusing, or simply creating new, even if expendable, narrative contexts and associations, is a good fit with this paper’s central argument. Indeed, only a couple of people on Twitter used their responses to remind people that this fire, like many others, was linked to human-made climate change, and that not only humans are in danger: “remember the animals.” The videos uploaded to YouTube follow similar action and narrative patterns: people defending or losing their homes, the situation at the evacuation center, raw video material shared on social media or uploaded to YouTube, anecdotal scenes, updates about the efforts to contain the fire, Mayor Garcetti’s assessments and forecast of the situation, and even a GTA 5 firefighter mod video simulating a wildfire near the Getty Center (GMAntonZ 2019).

All these pictures and interviews are metaphors of the flames’ fiery dynamics as they devour trees and houses at incredible speed. Instead of imitating the fire in the way they produce and consume news, media producers and YouTube creators could have stimulated a critical dialogue about the relation we have to wildfire stories. It is undoubtedly difficult to “cogitate” when surrounded by flames, but once the fire was contained, the flow of emergency news stopped, without any serious debate having taken place about what really happened. ‘Why should we still talk about it?’ the media producers seemed to be saying. ‘We already know the end of the story.’ The fire was contained, and the LAPD units involved in this fight were celebrated as heroes of the week. There is no better closing scene for a disaster movie than one that provides the public with a feeling of safety.

Public appearances of politicians surrounded by emergency teams, such as those of Mayor Garcetti (e.g., ABC10 © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

2019b, 2019c; NBCLA 2019), create the fiction of safety (cf.

Krieger 2021). Indeed, Hollywood’s commercial producers tend to avoid open endings that spark second thoughts in viewers’ minds. Exactly the same thing happened with the Getty Fire, at least on YouTube: there were no second thoughts or reflections, just an indefinite pause before the next disaster movie, also set in a burning California, would begin. However, deep inside, we know that this wasn’t a happy ending. YouTube might not be the promised land of critical public discourse. However, the creation of public discourse is not a technological issue, but a cultural one.

It also isn’t the responsibility of the LAFD to stimulate critical discourse about the role of climate change in the proliferation and frequency of devastating wildfires. LAFD firefighters and officers are very busy coordinating teams and citizens in their efforts to put out fires and save lives. It is more likely that this kind of discourse could be fostered by the media, including popular new media such as YouTube, where dozens of videos were uploaded during the first week after the Getty Fire became a global topic.

But such a discourse never took form, at least not on YouTube.

Dana Goodyear (2019) has criticized the California dream of never-ending good weather as being based on a lie.

She recalls that the houses built in the Crestwood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles belong to a utopian ideal, as do all houses built in the mountains of California. One firefighter allegedly told her: “Fire belongs in the mountains.

It’s healthy. The one thing that doesn’t belong here is us.”

Maybe some parts of California are indeed supposed to burn, as wildfire historian Stephen Pyne states. Similarly, in a Wired article, Matt Simon (2019) wrote that “it’s no coincidence that these wildfires are all burning at once.

Climate change has stolen the rain that normally would rehydrate the state at this time of year.” He also quotes the wildfire historian Stephen Pyne (e.g., 2015), who defines the combination of climate change and land misuse as the Pyrocene, a “sort of Ice Age, but with flames.” Simon lets us know that there is no definitive solution for avoiding wildfires. Still, he suggests that we should at least pay some attention to the company whose obsolete equipment sparked at least 17 major wildfires in 2017 alone, including the devastating Kincade Fire: Pacific Gas & Electric.

The Pacific Gas & Electric Company is in many respects responsible for an outdated and dangerous infrastructure.

Some of the investigative videos considered in this essay point in this direction (cf. ABC10 News 2019; ABC7 2019a; KTLA 2019; Los Angeles Times 2019). All the same, people living in the California mountains also need drinking water and electrical power. Debates have been ongoing, but these are less present in popular new media such as YouTube and Twitter. Indeed, the most discussed topics in connection with the Getty Fire had more to do with individual fates and “potential” cultural destruction than with the complexity of climate change and the human factors related to it. p61

Written Word thought-notes The most provocative topic discussed in the media during the Getty Fire was probably the morbid anticipation of a cultural catastrophe (e.g., Li 2019): Were the Getty’s art collections and its precious archives in danger?

The name of the fire itself implied that the Getty Center alone—instead of the whole neighborhood of Brentwood— was at risk, even though the Getty Center wasn’t in danger at any time. However, the popular imagery of burning art institutions was easy to stimulate. It was surely the kairós, the “suitable moment,” to talk about it. This kairós was, for the most part, historically and culturally motivated, since some very impactful fire events had occurred in the recent history of California and the Americas. Indeed, in November 2018, Manfred Heiting’s massive photographic archives went up in flames in Malibu’s Woolsey Fire. Brazil’s National Museum—the most important scientific and historical museum in the country, as well as the oldest—also burned down, in September 2018, after years of structural neglect.

T. J. Demos emphasizes the suggestive violence of cultural institutions in flames when he states, “the museum’s destruction seemed to foretell the catastrophe of the soonto-be with the election of Jair Bolsonaro, who expresses a deep nostalgia for the country’s erstwhile military dictatorship and has openly threatened genocide against Indigenous peoples who stand in the way of his extractive plans for the Amazon—for environmentalists, the planet’s lungs; for Indigenous peoples, Mother Earth.” (Demos 2019) Nothing similar was to be expected during the Getty Fire, but it seems that natural disasters become a real ontological threat for humanity when culture, as an expression of a high and advanced civilization, is under attack by “uncontrollable” natural forces.

The Getty Center, to which the Getty Museum belongs, had already survived the Skirball Fire two years before the Getty Fire, and the Getty Center buildings designed by Richard Meier even served, during both fires, as a shelter for firefighters, with Getty staff assisting with the logistics of fire engines and helicopter operations. It is indeed a piece

About the author

of luck for the Angelenos that the Getty Center was built to withstand fires and earthquakes, thereby helping preserve art and lives. In view of the morbid nihilistic aesthetics of disaster depicted in most U.S. media, the Getty Trust was prompted to clarify that the treasures of the Getty Museum were not under threat. In looking only at YouTube, we cannot clearly determine if they succeeded in stopping the idea of the Getty Center burning in people’s imaginations.

Even weeks later, most material uploaded under the keyword “Getty Fire” were images of the flames approaching the iconic institution. There is some kind of popular fascination at play here. The devastating force of wildfires captured in YouTube videos belongs to the realm of the Kantian “dynamically sublime,” an old aesthetic category for a new phenomenon.

The feeling of the dynamically sublime overwhelms us when we experience nature as being fear-inducing while knowing ourselves to be in safety. In Kant’s words, “the irresistibility of [nature’s] power certainly makes us, considered as natural beings, recognize our physical powerlessness, but at the same time it reveals a capacity for judging ourselves as independent of nature and a superiority over nature.” (Kant 2000: §28, pp. 261-262) The Getty Fire was also a story about superiority over nature. Immediately after some media began spreading the idea that the Getty collections might be threatened by the fire, the Getty Trust hurried to explain to the public, in a cross-media effort (Hay 2019; Shamberg/Stephan 2019), how the Getty Center was built and why the art was safer there than elsewhere in the world. However, the discourse on cultural heritage and natural (or accidental) disasters hasn’t evolved in the new media beyond the ephemeral structure of the type of storytelling that people are accustomed to consuming. Even on YouTube, news is conceived as an entanglement of social and staged activity.

Indeed, during the Getty Fire, the discourse on cultural conditionality and its relation to natural or accidental disasters evolved, in the best-case scenarios, through media other than TV or YouTube. The present overview has provided ample evidence to support this assertion.

Jesús Muñoz Morcillo, classical philologist and art historian, is a research fellow and lecturer at the Institut für Kunst- und Baugeschichte at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He studied in Salamanca, Würzburg, and Karlsruhe, and was research fellow at the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles thanks to a postdoctoral grant from the Volkswagen Foundation (September 2019 to June 2020).

From March 2019 until his research stay in the US, he was acting spokesperson of the ZAK | Centre for Cultural and General Studies at KIT. His recent publications include the edited volume Genealogy of Popular Science. From Ancient Ecphrasis to Virtual Reality (2020, transcript) and the monograph La ékfrasis griega, de la Antigüedad a Bizancio (2021, Peter Lang). Currently, his research focuses on the reception of ancient descriptions and their influence on Renaissance visual cultures in art, literature, and science.

Find out more

Institutional profile: kg.ikb.kit.edu/jehle/2514.php Read the blog version and access bibliography here © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.

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