Polar Zero: climate science-art collaboration

Polar Zero forms a major part of British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) multi-media engagement plan for COP 26.  This immersive exhibition, was on display at Glasgow Science Centre from early October 2021 and throughout COP26, (31 October – 12 November 2021).

Polar Zero was designed to showcase UK and scientific and artistic leadership within an international context.  Its narrative is matched to the COP26 theme for adaptation and resilience.

Welcome to Polar Zero

About Polar Zero

1765 – Antarctic air – a gift to the future

Polar Zero is a fusion of art, science and engineering.  Together Royal College of Art PhD student Wayne Binitie, British Antarctic Survey, and global engineering and design firm Arup, created a symbolic gift to the future.
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Ice core expertise – extracting a sample of gas from the year 1765. This was inserted into the glass sculpture

Artist Wayne Binitie artist explains his sculpture to Cathrine Dormor (Royal College of Art) during a visit to the exhibition

Ice Core – a moment frozen in time

Exhibition visitors can touch a real Antarctic ice core and experience the sound of ancient air bubbles popping as an Antarctic Peninsula the core emerges from an insulated tube.  As it melts and drips away it marks – in an artistic sense – the fragility of the polar ice. Polar Zero identifies the British Antarctic Survey’s ice-core laboratory as a repository of scientific and cultural data that reflects humanity’s engagement with, and intervention in, the Polar Regions.
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Polar Zero Ice Core. The ice slowly melts in the Polar Zero installation

Ice Stories

How is the past written, read and made legible in the present? Online and exhibition content aims to engage new audiences and promote international research collaborations. Ice Stories draws on personal anecdotes, memories and oral testimonies from the national and international scientists and experts whose lived experiences of the Arctic and Antarctic facilitate and enable their narrative futures to be written.

The unique experiences and perspectives of people who have worked with Antarctic ice are captured in the Ice Stories series. Credit: BAS.

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About COP26

This exhibition injects an artistic and cultural dimension to the climate negotiations at the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26).  Its message is one of hope and optimism. At a time of accelerating global warming, rapid melting of glaciers and rising sea levels Polar Zero invites us to pause and reflect on humanity’s impact on our past, present and future climate.

From 1-12 November 2021, heads of state, climate experts and campaigners will gather at United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP26.  The COP is a summit of the 197 countries that form the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or ‘UNFCCC’.

The summit, which takes place at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, aims to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change.  As COP26 Presidency, the UK is committed to working with all countries and joining forces with civil society, companies and people on the frontline of climate change to inspire action ahead of COP26.

Polar Zero Collaborators

Polar Zero aims to make an innovative cultural contribution to COP26 through an academic research and public science-art partnership that includes leading institutions – British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Arup, the Royal College of Art – in collaboration with artist Wayne Binitie, a PhD Fine Arts student funded by AHRC – http://waynebinitie.com/research.

For the last 5 years Wayne has collaborated on the Data as Art project Aesthetics of Water with ice core scientists, the creative team and public engagement specialists at BAS.  This project has led to public exhibitions, and the involvement of engineering expertise from Arup.  The project is a critical element of Wayne’s PhD research.  Working with UKRI, UKRI-NERC and the UK Govt Cabinet Office Chief Events Officer for COP26, BAS has brokered a collaboration with the official COP26 venue partner – the internationally acclaimed Glasgow Science Centre.

A programme of public engagement, intergovernmental science diplomacy, media and social media engagement will stimulate new ways of thinking, and new ways to express the impact of climate change on humanity.  Polar Zero emerges just as the idea of rethinking the human and non-human history of the Polar Regions is more urgent than ever before.

Polar Zero is a science-art collaborative partnership funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.  Our aims are to:

• Support the UK Government’s COP26 plans
• Celebrate UK research and innovation in the fields of science, art and engineering
• Highlight UK’s role in climate action
• Inspire action at all levels of society from high-level intergovernmental policy to local communities
• Generate positive media, stakeholder and public engagement
• Further develop a science-art collaboration that brings personal and professional benefit to early career artist Wayne Binitie
• Celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion

1. Immersive science-art exhibition opens at Glasgow Science Centre

   A new immersive exhibition, Polar Zero, opens at Glasgow Science Centre this weekend (2 October), injecting an artistic and cultural dimension to the climate negotiations at the Conference of the […]

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1. Ice core aquisition and analysis

   UK national facility and capability

   Read more of: Ice core aquisition and analysis