This kind of an art organization with its residencies and projects designed to further the debate around art and the environment, particularly in relation to the climate emergency and climate migration, does not exist in South Australia. So it is baby steps and transient experiments for me to find a way to supplement still photography.
I do have the time to do this, as Maya now stays with me when I stop walking and spend time making a photo or two along the littoral zone of this coastline. There are limits to hanging around and being involved in my work as I still need to keep a close eye on her if we are on the rocks near the sea in the wild places, because she is over-confident and could easily be swept away by a rogue wave, like the one that swept over me.
It is still not possible to take photos with a large format camera — ie. , and sticking my head under a dark cloth and taking 20 minutes to make a photo — since that means too much hanging around for Maya. I did try. She wandered off whilst I was under a dark cloth composing a picture and then returned to attack and play with the tripod.
I know so little about the sea as I am not a marine biologist. This is an unfathomable landscape as it is always changing –you never look at the same sea twice. Hence my initial turn to video.
Update
Another possibility approach to supplementing, augmenting, adjusting, or overlaying still photography’s reality would be to do some location specific sound recordings along the coast. Richard White, when he was in Adelaide recently, suggested a modest hand held recording device plus software to do this. This would enable me to to step beyond the limits of large format photography to make the shift to create art pieces from these walks.
In the absence of a research collective in Australia for visual artists and multi-disciplinary researchers— such as the Space Place Practice collective in the UK — I only have an embryonic DIY art walk project. Hopefully this will slowly evolving over time as it responds to this particular place on the coastal edge.whilst researching what is happening in the UK.