JAMES NGUYEN + DR JOHN GOULD UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

The Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) is delighted to introduce James Nguyen as the exceptional ANAT Synapse 2025 artist in residence.

James’ collaborative project, Diasporic Amphibians, is a collaborative project exploring the biological, social, and evolutionary impact of frog communities that have become geographically separated and isolated. The consequences of habitat disturbance and disease burden may be reshaping how frog communities might be undergoing distinct ecological pressures and even biological differentiations that could be conceptualised as a diasporic experience.

The Green and Golden Bell Frog once abundant across the Southeastern Seaboard of Australia has dwindled, now surviving in small isolated pockets including at Homebush Bay, Kooragang and Broughton Islands.

Coincidentally, many Southeast Asian migrant communities fleeing the war in Vietnam have been resettled around Parramatta River, Duck River and the suburbs near Homebush Bay. During this period, herbicides like Dioxins – the precursors of Agent Orange – were extensively used to destroy almost a quarter of the rainforests and farmlands in South Vietnam. Not widely known is Australia’s large-scale production, stockpiling, and testing of Agent Orange throughout this war. To this day, the chemical remnants from the manufacturing of these chemical weapons now buried, continues to slowly seep into the water as chemical leachates.

Accumulating up the food chain, Dioxins remain a lingering legacy of Australia’s chemical weapons industry.

Ironically, surviving in these contaminated waters, the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frog has thrived at Homebush Bay, perhaps because of these chemical leachates. It is proposed that the Chytrid fungal disease that have decimated frog populations elsewhere are being control by the chemicals at Homebush Bay. This isolated frog population, like the refugee communities that have resettled in the area, are thriving despite sharing a common legacy of industrial contamination and environmental disturbance.

This project spends time in the field with Dr John Gould from the University of Newcastle to record the calls and markings between two primary surviving populations of Green and Golden Bell Frogs.

James and John are interested in photographing and recording the skin coloration and marking changes that are slowly emerging between separated populations at Homebush and Newcastle. The second part of their research involves recording the mating calls of these two populations to ascertain whether there are ‘linguistic’ changes that might imply if these diasporic population of frogs can still understand one another or are developing unique new mating calls.

The project poses new animal-human-landscape relationships that can counter the cultural isolation of migrant and refugee communities who live close to, and often unseen contact with these similarly isolated frog populations.

James Nguyen was born in Bảo Lộc, Việt Nam. He is currently based in Murrumbeena (close to where the Boyds once ran their pottery studios). Nguyen’s work engages with reMatriation, decolonial thinking and language-brokering. He makes memes, performances, film, sculpture and installations that draw attention to the diasporic absurd. 

James has shown both ground-breaking and lacklustre work at institutions including ACCA, MCA, NGV, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery, 4A, and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art.

Dr. John Gould is a conservation and animal behaviour scientist at the University of Newcastle. Currently, John’s research focus is on the conservation of the threatened green and golden bell frog, Litoria aurea, including ways to manage key threatening process such as habitat modification and invasive species.

The ANAT Synapse residency program is supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the University of Newcastle (UoN).

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Our 2024 ANAT Synapse resident, Jennifer Kemarre Martinello has extended her creative research project into the first couple of months of 2025.

JENNIFER KEMARRE MARTINIELLO + PROF SIMON HABERLE,
THE SCHOOL OF CULTURE, HISTORY AND LANGUAGES, ANU

The Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) is delighted to introduce Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello as one of the exceptional ANAT Synapse 2024 residents. Jennifer will embark on the explorative project titled The Stories Beneath My Ancestors’ Footprints.

“As an Aboriginal (Arrernte) artist, storytelling is the heart of my artistic practice. In 2014 I created my first series of hot blown glass cylindrical Voice Cores, inspired by a long held fascination with the capacity of scientific cores sunk into the earth to access a place’s deep time through the analysis of ecopaleological spores, pollen and sediments.” Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello

This collaboration focuses on creative research and practice to discover the paleoecological substrata of Jennifer’s Aboriginal and Chinese ancestors’ lands. Mentored by Prof. Simon Haberle, the artist will delve into geo-culturally specific data, exploring the ancestral identity through pollens, diatoms, phytoliths, charcoal deposits, and spores. Her innovative approach blends art and science, resonating with the heart of her Aboriginal storytelling practice.

As part of the ANAT Synapse program, residents create online creative research journals, these serve as unique live documents of the residency and as a cultural artefact.

read JENNIFER'S CREATIVE RESEARCH JOURNAL

Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello OAM is a multi-award winning artist of Aboriginal (Lower Southern Arrernte), Chinese and Anglo-Celtic descent. Her works are held in multiple national and international public and private collections. In 2023 she was recognised as a Pacific Region Craft Master by the World Crafts Council.

Simon Haberle is currently Professor of Palaeoecology and Natural History in the School of Culture, History and Language. His research is currently focussed on our understanding of the impact of deep-time climate variability and human activity on terrestrial ecosystems of Australia and the region. He is also using his knowledge of Australian pollen to explore the impact of pollen and spores on respiratory health.

The 2025 ANAT Synapse residency program is supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) and the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.

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ANAT Synapse Residencies 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | OLDER

For over thirty five years, from its home base, Tarndanya on Kaurna Country (Adelaide, South Australia), Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) continues to be the  national leader in the field of experimental arts and cross-disciplinary practice with science and technology partners. The not-for-profit organisation operates on a continuum with varying entry points, including residencies, workshops and triennial events. Engaging artists at every level of their creative research practice, sci-tech-art curious audiences and science and technology partners like universities and research facilities, ANAT believes in the essential role artists play across all areas of society.

ANAT Bespoke Residencies

In addition to the prestigious Synapse program, ANAT delivers bespoke artist’s residencies, with science, technology and research partners from the academic and private sector. As the name suggests, no two ANAT Bespoke Residencies are the same. Every iteration is customised to the project’s unique characteristics and is jointly supported by ANAT and the collaborator.

Previous Bespoke partners include: CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), AWRI (The Australian Wine Research Institute) and SAHMRI (The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute)

ANAT is a global leader in brokering opportunities for artists to work with science and technology partners. We do this because we believe artists are essential to how we imagine and shape our future. If your organisation is interested in investing in the transformational nature of interdisciplinary collaboration, please get in touch [email protected]

ANAT is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, the South Australian Government through Arts SA and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of Federal and State Governments.