Benthos: Visualising the Global Ocean

“Benthos” is a project to explore and generate fulldome visualisations of volumetric and multidimensional datasets derived from Australian Antarctic Division, CSIRO and international oceanographic and marine science programmes.

This page details some of the work-in-progress towards those visualisations.

Further detail can be read at:  http://www.petermorse.com.au/projects/benthos/

Enormous amounts of data have been generated during the International Polar Year (IPY) during the extensive international CAML (Census of Antarctic Marine Life) and ongoing marine research activities by the AAD and other marine-science research institutions in Australia and internationally. These include datasets measuring physical features such as ocean currents, temperature gradients, thermo-haline cycles as well as ecological features such as marine biodiversity; benthic and pelagic ecology (deep ocean; continental shelf; shoreline) and so forth. Part of this project involves identification of suitable datasets for volumetric and three-dimensional visualisation.

Volumetric visualisation in a fulldome format explores both aesthetic and empirical features of datasets, creating a fertile intersection of the sciences and arts. Within the field of contemporary media arts little has been done with fulldome data visualisation, however, there is an emergent field of data-arts, which draws upon scientific datasets and explores them in new and insightful ways – the viewer’s immersion in a visualised dataset reveals not only the inherent beauty of normally unseen structures but can also elicit an understanding of complex connections between parameters that may not have been revealed via conventional analytic approaches.

Benthos is supported by a Synapse Art-Science residency via the Australian Network for Art and Technology and the Australia Council for the Arts. It is also generously supported by the Australian Antarctic Division and the Western Australian Supercomputer Program at the University of Western Australia.

Personnel:

Dr Peter Morse, Visualisation Consultant and Media Artist.  www.petermorse.com.au

Paul Bourke, Research Associate Professor at the Western Australian Supercomputer Program (WASP, University of Western Australia)

Dr Martin Riddle, Senior Principal Research Scientist (Programme Leader, Environmental Protection and Change), Australian Antarctic Division.

Dr Steve Nicols, Senior Research Scientist (Program Leader, Southern Ocean Ecosystems), Australian Antarctic Division.

Dr Ben Raymond, Data Mining & Visualisation, Australian Antarctic Division.

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