Disrupting Currents: Catch + Release is a situation-specific interactive interdisciplinary new media art exhibition which asks questions surrounding the relationship between art and interactive or immersive digital technology as a discursive means for reflecting on social, cultural, and ecological transition in coastal communities. The exhibition addresses the mapping of stories of cultural and geographic transition in the context of global changes within coastal communities that once relied on fishing.
The first exhibition, Disrupting Currents: Catch + Release took place in March 2010 at VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver, a not for profit media production and exhibition centre. The next iteration of the multi-part installation was exhibited in the Parks Canada Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site, in Steveston, BC, Canada in May 2010.
The exhibition includes a series of geologically inspired sculptures, a multi channel video displaying excerpts of interviews with people involved in fishing and the fishing industry and a sensor-enabled interactive and immersive projection. The projection is the visual translations of real-time data from NEPTUNE, Canada’s underwater ocean observatory in the Pacific Ocean west of Vancouver Island. The visual patterns of the exhibition transmission are disrupted by visitors’ presence, underscoring the relationship between our present ecological circumstance, our history and our impact on the future. The accumulated scientific data in the projection echoes the implied accretion of mineral material in the sculpture formations and the polyphony of voices in the multi-channel video, referring to both cultural and geological time.
The project is intended to be adjusted to local conditions and exhibited in coastal cities affected by globalization and transformed natural environments. It allows using marine observatory data both real-time and off-line relevant to the local context and through new media, sensor technologies and tangible interactive tools to ‘catch’ and ‘release’ stories from the community into the public sphere.