Discovering the unknown continent - Antarctica: Global Science from a Frozen Continent - page 28

Figure 1.22 Wandering albatross sketch. (Credit: Bruce Pearson)

first formally recognised that
there was a place for an alternative view of the continent to the scienti

It was the National Science Foundation that

c. Since
inaugurating an Artists and Writers Program in the 1970s they have provided over
60 photographers, musicians and composers, writers and poets, painters and lm

makers with the opportunity to present the Antarctic through their eyes. Such has
been the success of the programme that it was copied first by Australia, then by

New Zealand in 1996 and most recently by Britain in 2000.
As these programmes have matured they have encompassed an increasing
range of interests including jewellery and costume design, sculptors, playwrights,
ceramicists and video installation artists. This many-facetted view of the continent
has attracted those for whom science is a closed topic, whose instinctive response to
a place is emotional, and whose sensibilities lie in sounds and sights and words
rather than the formalistic structures of science.
For some the elements of the landscape have provided insight into the
primeval changes as land and ice interact whilst others have looked through the