Art meets science in an intriguing collaboration
This year GNS Science hosted visiting US glass artist and Fulbright scholar Anna Lehner. A glass sculpture called Shifting Foundations resulted from the connection.
Anna likes to explore themes of geohazards and earth sciences – drawn to the boundaries where the tectonic plates come together and collide, and where they separate to form new bedrock.
“I started out working with glass in a traditional studio setting” says Anna. “After a few years I wanted to challenge myself to incorporate larger themes and concepts into my practise. In graduate school my work started to explore inquiry about the natural environment. I was particularly interested in themes about our geophysical environment and natural hazards.”
Geologic forces connect to the materials Anna uses, with themes of time, temperature, stress and fracture inherent in working with glass as a medium. Anna’s interest in seismic activity grew during time spent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anna began working with US Geological Survey data to code artworks that interacted with earthquake notifications.
In developing my proposal for the Fulbright program, Aotearoa New Zealand was the perfect choice to explore these themes because of its seismic activity.
“I had connected with Dr Laura Wallace at GNS Science in 2018. Through conversations with her and Dr Jamie Howarth, possibilities grew into reality. GNS and VUW were the perfect institutions to call my home base. I was able to work and have discussions with scientists, PhD candidates and researchers who all study these hazards.”
Early in the visit, Anna joined our scientists on field trips, including a lake-coring trip in the South Island. Anna found the ethereal CT scans of turbidite cores to be a point of inspiration, fascinated by how much information was held by such fragile layers.
The resulting work – Shifting Foundations – is a glass sculpture inspired by a section of sediment core taken from the Hikurangi Subduction Margin. The specific core was taken from the Campbell Canyon showing the seafloor effects from the complex Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake in 2016.
The sculpture is on display in the GNS Science foyer at Avalon, Lower Hutt.
Anna hopes to create a series of three-metre high glass sculptures to convey the same concept.
In this video, Anna talks about the creative process, what it's been like to work with scientists, and Jamie Howarth explains the science it represents.
Art Meets Science | Shifting Foundations – In this video, Anna talks about the creative process, what it's been like to work with scientists, and Dr Jamie Howarth explains the science it represents. transcript
So at GNS Science we're always looking for ways to bring science into the lives of New Zealanders.
And so today we're going to talk about just that which is a collaboration between scientists and artists to convey some of the scientific research that we do here.
So I'm talking here today with Anna Lehner.
She's been working with scientists to try and convey concepts about our active plate boundaries to the public.
So Anna, what is it about your art that that inspires you the most?
Yeah, so I'm really inspired by the forces at play in our natural environment and I think that's really what makes my practice tick and it's the thing that drives me to ask questions and pursue you know what I came here to New Zealand to do which was the convergence of science and art and really specifically seismic activity.
Can you tell us a little bit about exactly how you created this piece?
So back when I was able to do field work before March what really inspired me was the CT scans of the sediment cores.
So from that inspiration I basically went from CT scan to 3D print and that took a bit of time because it's quite an intricate process.
So in figuring that out basically I wanted to see if I could translate a sediment core into the fragile material glass. I was able to take those 3D prints and make molds of those objects and in making molds you can make molds with a material that will withstand a very high temperature
Has it been fun?
Yes it's been a massive amount of fun.
I think the the best part of it was really asking a lot of questions of what could be done so really this is just the start of what this could evolve into something bigger and that to me is really fun and exciting.
So Anna what exactly is it like working with scientists?
Um it's a lot more fun than I expected! No, it's really um to be here and be surrounded by people who are really at their gut core interested in just learning and finding out more for the good of society is just so fantastic.
So, I'm talking to Dr Jamie Howarth here from Victoria University of Wellington.
So Jamie can you tell me a little bit about what it's been like to work with an artist over the last year?
Yeah no I can. I have to admit I started this process with a significant degree of trepidation about what it would be like particularly taking an artist into the field but I have to say I've been really pleasantly surprised.
Can you tell us about the science behind the art that you guys have been working on?
The Hikurangi Margin is New Zealand's largest but least well understood source of earthquake hazard we know that by analogy to similar margins elsewhere in the world it could be capable of producing an earthquake with a magnitude up to magnitude 9, so a really large earthquake indeed with significant impact for large tracts of New Zealand's North Island and the upper South Island.
So we actually want to understand something about the hazard posed by these large earthquakes we need to understand how big they can actually get and how often they occur in order to do that we need to read the archive of past earthquakes that's preserved in the sedimentary records that accumulate on the sea floor.
So the piece that Anna has created, that's from a core that you guys actually collected?
Yeah so it's actually from a really special set of cores in 2016 when the Kaikoura earthquake happened it generated strong ground shaking along the southern Hikarangi Margin triggering these underwater landslides and flows of sediment and water producing these really diagnostic deposits