Antarctica
Collection of “data” through drawing, painting, photography, and sound recording, to name a few media, has been part of aesthetic and scientific exploration of the natural world for centuries. These records have helped form the public conception of spaces that are beyond the reach and view of the average person. As the romantic, late-Victorian era faded into the twentieth century, scientific inquiry intensified and began to define our understanding of the natural world. Our conception of Antarctica is framed nearly exclusively through media and scientific data that have been gathered over more than a century of exploration and study.
Much of the early historical evidence helped cement the romantic vision of Antarctica as a place for heroic contests of exploration, pitting human beings against nature in a quest to be the first to traverse and claim unknown territory. These myths—based on names like Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and Byrd—still occupy much of the lay perception of this remote region. This is the Antarctica of imagination, the unknowable.
While photographs and sound recordings provide some of our most direct analogs for sensory experience and thus serve as “trusted” interpretations of the real, they remain highly interpretive artifacts. Whether scientific data provides a more accurate picture is an open question. Certainly, out of context and coded in an often-esoteric knowledge, much scientific data is not easily interpreted.
Bringing the unique significance of the Antarctic landscape, its beauty, its importance for scientific inquiry, and its fragile natural and political balance to attention, will aid in the preservation of this remarkable natural commons for future study. The very existence of this place is important to both the psychological and physical wellbeing of us all. To borrow from and paraphrase Thoreau, in this wilderness may well be the preservation of our world. What we have yet to learn there will continue to engender curiosity, inspiration, and hopefully answers to vexing problems of great significance.
Antarctica remains a contested place. Its future is open to many paths. Ultimately, it will be people’s emotional as well as intellectual responses to such issues as climate change, resource development, territorial governance, human use/occupation, and cultural/scientific value that will determine the future of this remarkable continent.
Much of the early historical evidence helped cement the romantic vision of Antarctica as a place for heroic contests of exploration, pitting human beings against nature in a quest to be the first to traverse and claim unknown territory. These myths—based on names like Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, and Byrd—still occupy much of the lay perception of this remote region. This is the Antarctica of imagination, the unknowable.
While photographs and sound recordings provide some of our most direct analogs for sensory experience and thus serve as “trusted” interpretations of the real, they remain highly interpretive artifacts. Whether scientific data provides a more accurate picture is an open question. Certainly, out of context and coded in an often-esoteric knowledge, much scientific data is not easily interpreted.
Bringing the unique significance of the Antarctic landscape, its beauty, its importance for scientific inquiry, and its fragile natural and political balance to attention, will aid in the preservation of this remarkable natural commons for future study. The very existence of this place is important to both the psychological and physical wellbeing of us all. To borrow from and paraphrase Thoreau, in this wilderness may well be the preservation of our world. What we have yet to learn there will continue to engender curiosity, inspiration, and hopefully answers to vexing problems of great significance.
Antarctica remains a contested place. Its future is open to many paths. Ultimately, it will be people’s emotional as well as intellectual responses to such issues as climate change, resource development, territorial governance, human use/occupation, and cultural/scientific value that will determine the future of this remarkable continent.