Pilot Project: Sea Level Change
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10 Factors Enhancing
SciSound Collaborations

Pilot Project: Sea Level Change

In partnership with The Earth Institute, Columbia University, and Climate Week NYC this SciSound music video develops the understanding of sea level and coastal change, through the process of collaboration at the intersection of music and science.

Inspired by the publications and mathematical equations of Jacky Austermann, Assistant Professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, both Eve O'Donnell, composer and Artistic Producer at National Sawdust and Lea Luka Sikau, Mezzo-Soprano and Researcher at Cambridge University have created a multimedia music video and creative response for the digital performance space.

The music explores the patterns and the structural frame within the scientific work, through the use of electronics, voice, guitar, mathematical equation, instructional performance art techniques, and spoken and written text that displays Austermann’s equation and results.

Join them to explore the importance of collaboration between interdisciplinary fields, to develop innovative dissemination formats of scientific research, which have the potential to highlight issues surrounding sea level change, climate change, and sustainability.

Watch the Concert Lecture with Julius von Bismarck

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Exploring SciArt: Between Climatology and Composition is an online concert and lecture curated by Lea Luka Sikau and Eve O’Donnell with internationally renowned artist Julius von Bismarck, and earth scientist, Jacky Austermann, Assistant Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where they will present current work and discuss the process of collaboration at the intersection of art and science.

Watch the Whole Composition

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Research Process

The instructional text divides the process into pieces to reflect on the scientific fieldwork process. As the instructional text initiates and ends the music video, it frames the musical composition in a way that the music video embodies an alternative approach of disseminating scientific results.

This is the instructional text included in the video:

“Travel to destination.
Walk along the coastline.
Spot the outcrop.
Measure the elevation.
Collect the sample.
Return home.
Analyze the sample.
Calculate sea level change.

[Musical Composition]

Present the findings.
Disseminate the work.”

Geologic Time Scales

The composition creates an analogy by adapting the numbers of bars sung about geologic time scales to the relative length of those time periods. For example, the Cretaceous is a geological period lasting 79 million years, while the Pliocene lasted 2,75 million years. In the video, you will hear an electronic layer which depicts precisely those differences in lengths of the sung time periods.

“We need to understand the earth’s behaviour over the geologic periods in order to understand how sea level is going to change in the future. Ice sheets have been waxing and waning which is affecting sea level. As the ice sheets melt, the land is rebounding, claiming back its territory and sea level is falling locally. We are currently at a stage where ice sheets are smaller than they were over the last 20.000 years. The increase that we see in temperature and CO2 today are unprecedented in earth’s history. However, we can use earth’s history as a natural laboratory to study how high sea level was when temperatures were warmer. I am particularly interested in understanding how high sea level was 125.000 years ago.” – Jacky Austermann

Sea Level Equation

Why do we need an equation to calculate sea level change?

“Sea level rise varies from location to location and we need to adjust for that with such an equation. In Nunavut, Arctic Canada, sea level has fallen for tenths of metres in the last hundred years. But sea level is not globally falling, it is the land that is rising out of the ocean which causes this local sea level fall.“ — Jacky Austermann

As land uplift causes local sea level fall, we chose to stress that both: land and sea level changes.

Equations in the Music

\begin{align}\mathit{SL} &= G - (R + H + I)\\\\ T &= (R + H + I) - G\\ &= - \mathit{SL}\\\\ C &= \begin{cases} 1 & \text{if}~\mathit{SL} > 0\\ 0 & \text{if}~\mathit{SL} \leq 0 \end{cases} \end{align}

\begin{align}\mathit{SL} &= G - (R + H + I)\\\\ T &= (R + H + I) - G\\ &= - \mathit{SL}\\\\ C &= \begin{cases} 1 & \text{if}~\mathit{SL} > 0\\ 0 & \text{if}~\mathit{SL} \leq 0 \end{cases} \end{align}

Sea meets Land

The spoken text refers to the ever changing coastlines:

“When I think about sea meeting land, I think of contrast.
It draws people in. The color, temperature, shape, dynamics.
Where sea meets land is a constantly shifting boundary.“
— Jacky Austermann

10 Factors Enhancing SciSound Collaborations *

1. Profound disciplinary grounding
The study illustrates a significant correlation between the artists’ and scientists’ expertise in the specific subject of the interdisciplinary collaboration and the success of the project.
2. Shared motivation or vision
The involved researchers and artists should either have similar shared goals or an overarching vision that motivates the parties to work meaningfully and collaboratively. Even if this is the case, different parameters of understanding success might still lead to challenges during the process.
3. Shared respect for the other discipline
The disciplines should actively work against the establishment of hierarchies by fostering an equal value perception among the involved disciplines that goes beyond purely utilitarian means of illustration or data generation. If the involved artists or scientists describe the project with helping or supporting the other discipline, this can be regarded as a valid indicator for a less successful collaboration and more one-directional cooperation approach. Research institutions as a whole should work against this notion of artists feeling that they have to justify their existence (Ziporyn 2019).
4. Shared funding
The disciplines should actively work against the establishment of hierarchies by fostering an equal value perception among the involved disciplines that goes beyond purely utilitarian means of illustration or data generation. If the involved artists or scientists describe the project with helping or supporting the other discipline, this can be regarded as a valid indicator for a less successful collaboration and more one-directional cooperation approach. Research institutions as a whole should work against this notion of artists feeling that they have to justify their existence (Ziporyn 2019).
5. Third Space
The establishment of space and time in-between the disciplines furthers the interdisciplinary discourse whether it is via platform solutions online or in the physical space on campus or in studios. In this regard, the possibility of simultaneous interaction has a significant impact on the quality of reciprocal collaborations.
6. Shared tools
By sharing and developing common collaboration tools, the challenge of communication between the disciplines can be facilitated.
7. Shared dissemination
New ways of publishing and disseminating work-in-progress stages open up numerous interdisciplinary avenues of research.
8. Flexibility
Prerequisites for flexibility are teamwork ability and previous interdisciplinary collaboration experiences. These enable a willingness to reiterate combined with a strive for knowledge production.
9. Knowledge of Collaboration Cycles
The collaborator’s awareness of the different disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary stages of art science endeavours can facilitate the structuring of such a project.
10. Incentivization
As a participation in interdisciplinary art science collaborations does not help early and mid-career level researchers to advance their scientific career, most of them are not well enough incentivized to join or start interdisciplinary collaborations. Even if they join, the academic structure conveys the perception of those art science collaborations as side projects. Thus, research institutions as a whole should make those types of collaborations count, for instance, by modifying hiring policies. Moreover, renown journals should support the visibility and epistemic value of art science collaborations.

* While conducting a research project about sciart collaboration at Harvard University and MIT, SciScound Initiator Lea Luka Sikau extracted ten decisive factors which significantly impact the success of an interdisciplinary collaboration.