The Ocean ARTic Partnership 2021-22
Throughout 2021/2, Michael held a residency as a sound artist within the Ocean ARTic partnership. He is working with a team of scientists based at AWI, Germany, aloingside scientists affiliated with MASTS, and Blue-Action EU.
Ocean ARTic is a new partnership that aims to bring creatives and marine climate scientists together to explore the impact of climate change in the Arctic and Scotland through climate data.
This partnership, comprising People Ocean Planet, the Marine Alliance of Science and Technology in Scotland, Creative Informatics, and Blue Action EU, was funded by Creative Scotland and was established in a pivotal year for climate change negotiations at CoP26, and the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
Michael produced a full length recording; Light Water is Black Water, which was performed at InSpace, Edinburgh with his group, Black Glass Ensemble. The work received its public premiere at The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh.
Zooplankton Nocturne
An unexpected side project, Zooplankton Nocturne, arose as a consequence of Michael's frequent presentations regarding his data composition work with the ARTic Partnership. Working with Dr Laura Hobbs of Strathclyde University/Scottish Association for Marine Sciences Michael worked with datasets comprising acoustic scatterback, lunar and solar timetables and ice records to help draw attention to how zooplankton in Arctic winter were adapting to a lunar rather than a solar day because of reduced sea ice cover.
The work, articulating how the complext food chain was becoming undermined at the first link with grave consequences cascadingg from that point, was selected to play a part in Brian Eno's Earth:Percent initiiative.
