Project team: Serena Pollastri, Adrian Gradinar (ImaginationLancaster), Liz Edwards (School of Computing and Communication).
Year: 2018
This project explored tools and practices that may enable us and the public to capture, understand, and communicate the complexity of biodiversity in Morecambe Bay. It was a small, experimental project conducted in 2018 by Serena Pollastri, Liz Edwards and Adrian Gradinar, and funded by Ensemble, an EPSRC funded programme that is exploring digital technologies and environmental change.
We started by building a data visualisation machine (our Biodiversity Zoetrope), which enabled users to explore the different stories of the bay, and see their hidden interconnections. By spinning the zoetrope, users are able to understand the entanglements of tides, creatures and communities living in the bay.
We wanted to build a machine that helps people see the sort of data that is hard to see directly (because too big, too hidden, or too complex). But this is only one part of the story: we believe that meaningful engagements with the bay require direct engagement with place, its rhythms, and its creatures. So, the next step in the zoetrope was a toolkit that may allow people to collect their own personal, subjective, experiential data. And thinking of ways in which these data can be integrated with the stories of entanglements and complexity that the Biodiversity Zoetrope displays.
