Two professors in seemingly unrelated departments – communication studies and biological sciences – joined forces in Antarctica to reenact some of the most iconic pictures taken on the continent over 100 years ago.

Patricia Suchy of the Department of Communication Studies and Vince LiCata of the Department of Biological Sciences spent January and February of 2016 working on a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers project called “Persistence of Vision: Antarctica.”

The pair were inspired by historic images taken during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration when explorers were first mapping out the continent. Most of the pictures that inspired them were taken by Herbert Ponting during the Terra Nova Expedition from 1910-1913.

During the Heroic Age, it became common for teams of scientific and geographic explorers to have a professional expedition photographer with them to document the scenery, people and discoveries. As such, Ponting was one of the first men to bring a movie camera to Antarctica.

Suchy and LiCata took Ponting’s moving and still images and reenacted them with contemporary people and technology to make video portraits, which are pictures that move incredibly slowly to the point that they appear still until one looks closer and sees something like a piece of hair blowing in the wind.

It was important to use modern technology and color because Ponting’s images are in black and white, Suchy said, the images are used to show the similarities of the connections across history but also the development and the difference.

For example, a historic picture of a man surveying McMurdo Dry Valleys will cross dissolve to a contemporary man working as a hydrologist surveying in almost the exact same place.

Suchy said the purpose of the video portraits are to bring livelihood to the contemporary photos and to also show the viewer how strange of a place Antarctica is.

It does something to one’s perception, she said — it’s 24-hour sunlight during the austral summer which occurs from October to February.

There is no humidity in Antarctica, and humidity is what refracts light, so it is impossible to judge distances, she added.

Looking out her room window, Suchy said she could see the transantarctic mountains.

“Some days, it looked like I could walk to them in an afternoon, and other days they looked impossibly far away — and they are far away, but things shift around, and nothing is in human scale,” she said.  

Fewer than 5 percent of the population travel to McMurdo Station where Suchy and LiCata stayed, she said. It is the largest base in Antarctica, and the entire continent is devoted to scientific research and peaceful sharing of a continent.

At its peak, the station has 800-1,000 residents. There is nothing green, and there is no trees. It’s not all snow and ice, she said — there was a lot of volcanic rock where they stayed in McMurdo Station, and the Dry Valleys they visited looked like Mars.

Music festivals like IceStock, dances, races, bars with bands and coffeehouses with warm drinks are just a few aspects of the social life in McMurdo.

It’s a town of science, and it’s like nowhere else on earth, Suchy said.

The goal of the project is to change the way people interact with images. “We’re alerting spectators to the idea that things are different here,” Suchy said.

The images are installed — some are on big screens and some are floating in space — and one of them is on a giant scrim that the audience can walk through.

Another goal was for people’s bodies to have a relationship with the images so that the viewer is not just sitting there but instead walking around like one does in a museum, Suchy said.

The gallery-style installation will premiere in LSU’s HopKins Black Box Theatre (137 Coates Hall) Thursday, March 16, through Saturday, March 18, with admissions beginning at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 19, at 2:30 p.m. Audience members may make donations at the door.

Following the University premiere, the installation is planned to tour various galleries and universities, including several where scientists who participated in the project work.
Suchy and LiCata kept blogs of their journey at https://beyondtheutmostbound.wordpress.com/about/ and http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/author/vlicata/.