Dr. Nigel Helyer is an internationally prominent sculptor and sound artist, whose interdisciplinary practice combines art and science to embrace our social, cultural and physical environments. He brings these concerns together in creative projects that prompt the community to engage with their cultural histories, identity and sense of place; inviting us to examine the abstract conditions of our world and our complex relationships to it. His creative output spans forty years and ranges from large public artworks to Biennales, Triennales and Museum and Gallery exhibitions.

Can you tell us about your ANAT Synapse residency and where the research has led you?

I undertook an ANAT Synapse residency with the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) which is situated on the Salamanca quayside in Hobart, commencing in 2012. Bio_Logging; Under the IceCap was a collaboration with marine scientist Dr. Mary-Anne Lea (IMAS) which linked scientific bio-logging data collection and GIS techniques with my interests in interactive acoustic cartography and the development of Audio Portraits that extend the conceptual and intuitive grasp of otherwise extremely abstract data.

The extensive and extremely complex datasets collected by southern elephant seals diving under Antarctic ice, and transiting across the Southern Ocean, represent a considerable interpretive challenge. Thus providing the potential for a hybrid art and science exploration of new methods and forms for manifesting the data, and for developing novel forms of generating public awareness and debate.

During our collaboration, we worked to visualise and sonify oceanic environmental data collected by southern elephant seals on their deep dives under the Antarctic ice shelves (to depths of 2000 m) and their long Southern Ocean transits (over thousands of kilometres). The seals, tagged with satellite-capable bio-logging devices, would transmit data packages each time they surfaced between under-ice foraging dives, in effect mapping the ocean conditions in an otherwise totally inaccessible environment.

We set about exploring novel ways to make these complex data sets palpable. Our hunch was that it might be possible for such complexity to be interpreted as a series of experimental music concerts, and we formed an additional collaboration with the UTAS Conservatorium of Music. Each concert in the series was designed to test the hypothesis that the musically trained mind is particularly well adapted to negotiate complex streams of data unfolding in real-time. We experimented with ways for musicians to respond to data-generated 3D mappings, visual scores and direct data sonification, and we monitored the potential resonances and confluences that bridge the data and the sonic response.

That was twelve years ago — and I continue to work with IMAS scientists. Currently, I am engaged as the artist attached to a large environmental project in the Tasman Fracture Marine Park commissioned by Parks Tasmania.

The long-term effect on my practice has been a growing interest, not just in the natural world, but in the ways in which we represent it, which ironically is most often as data-derived statistical models. Mark Twain cited the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as saying, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics!” which alerts us to the dissonance between appearance and essence.

I am mindful of a phrase written in 1918 by the French poet Jean Cocteau:

“L’art c’est la science faite chair.”

“Art is science embodied,” neatly encapsulates a perspective that imagines art and science as two expressions, as two voices of the same spirit of enquiry, but perhaps delivered in a different register. Cocteau’s short phrase employs the French word chair, in English quite literally flesh, emphasising that art brings science into the visceral world as a palpable experience, and by so doing, it can become something that we can relate to directly—a narrative behind the data! It is this embodiment of curiosity, knowledge, and sheer wonder that the melding of art and science is all about.

What is the biggest challenge of being an interdisciplinary artist?

The challenges of inter-disciplinarity exist in several registers; some intellectual, some pragmatic and others associated with notions of career and economy. In effect, a truly interdisciplinary practice requires constant negotiation and reconciliation of world views, methodologies and modus operandi. Having plenty of natural curiosity and enthusiasm I am not sure if I ever had a choice to be anything but interdisciplinary. I baulk at the confines of a single metier or medium, and am deeply suspicious of virtuosity, believing it to be something to be achieved and then set aside, as yet another restriction.

From a professional career perspective, however, any inter-; trans; cross- or multi-modal practice can potentially be a disadvantage; as it is difficult to define; and even harder to monetise (but that is an old story).

The real benefit and pleasure of working across disciplines is the opportunity to get to know others with different experiences, different perceptions and different skills. Steve Kurtz once responded to a question about how to create an art and science collaboration. “Easy,” he said, “Go make friends with a Scientist.”In general, I am a great fan of Occam’s Razor — always go for the simple solution!

What kind of mentor-mentee relationships have you experienced throughout your years of practice? Is there any particular mentor or mentee that stood out for you?

From 1976 to 1979 I studied at the Royal College of Art. A time of tough work, political activism, rock and roll, punk aesthetics and the meat-grinder of London! In the Department of Environmental Media, we were privileged to have more staff than students, but I can only recall one moment of inspiration (but maybe that is all it takes). One of my tutors, a French philosopher called Yehuda Saffron, approached me one day, placed his hand on both my shoulders, and gently shook me, saying Read poetry, read poetry, read poetry. Then he walked off — I did — it was the best advice that anyone at the RCA ever offered me.

I much prefer the idea of mentorship to the, less fluid relationships that are established in tertiary education. Firstly, mentorships are of necessity personalised, a dynamic between individuals, rather than between categories (teacher/class). And even if there is a gradient of knowledge and experience between mentor and mentee, they are essentially democratic. A voluntary meeting of equals who are free to negotiate the course of the narrative.

Somewhere, somehow, something went horribly wrong with art education in Australia. I would hazard a guess that despite all of the good intentions and often considerable investment in cultural infrastructure, there is an extremely simple, but key component missing — and that is milieu. A portmanteau French word derived from Middle + Place. This is the place where people meet, talk, disagree, steal each other’s ideas, hang out in studios, get horribly drunk and make fools of themselves — in short, the creative motor.

As an interdisciplinary artist, who and what are your biggest influences?

To be frank — I rarely read art journals, even though I write, and I generally avoid art openings, finding gossip and crowds difficult! I am, however, a passionate reader of fiction, poetry and history, and an incurable cinephile. I write prolifically; which earlier in my career was mainly theoretical and critical, but my interests have gradually transformed into creative writing, which increasingly I allow to become the driving force behind my visual artwork. I confess to being a “Beuys Scout” in my undergraduate years at Liverpool College of Art (UK) when my extended youthful hitchhiking and cycling trips immersed me in the resurgence of European sensibilities, which gradually displaced the post-war American cultural assault on Europe. The likes of Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Hans Haacke, Rebecca Horn and Sophie Calle, or the Italian Arte Povera crew as well as the British walkers were my guiding lights. Deeper still, the root of my outlook is the result of growing up in a small rural fishing village, which engendered a strong attachment to the natural world, a sense of history and an unchecked notion of how one might explore the world.

What are you working on at the moment?

This year I have been working on three main projects (which thanks to Covid have all migrated into a compressed time scale) and rolling out the logistics for a long-term, multi-partner collaboration Virulent for 2025/6. The first project Sonus Maris is the result of a lengthy collaboration with the Water Research Laboratory (UNSW) and is a form of data-archeology. Using a fifty-year dataset of satellite earth imaging we were able to reveal the dynamic behaviour of a series of ICOLLs (intermittently Closed and Open Lakes and Lagoons) that are situated on the NSW coast. As ICOLLs are subject to both marine and terrestrial forces they are extremely sensitive environmental indicators. Sonus Maris is currently in its fifth exhibition iteration at the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum (until mid-October 2024). 

The second project BioSphere/DataSphere is currently in production and is my contribution as an artist embedded with a research team of environmental and marine scientists investigating the biological productivity of the Tasman Fracture Marine Park, an area of 43,000 square kilometres of wild ocean and jagged islands located off the southern coast of Tasmania. The multi-agency team includes the AAD (Australia Antarctic Division), CSIRO, Parks Tasmania, and Tasmanian Fisheries and is led by the IMAS (the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies) where my original ANAT Synapse residency began, and happily has continued ever since 2011. My contribution will culminate in an exhibition at the Mawson Gallery (IMAS) on Salamanca Quay, Hobart. (Opening mid-September 2024 for six months).

The final project for 2024 is Freeze Frame which had its nascence during the lenghty periods of Covid isolation. Freeze Frame is a hybrid work, initiated by a long-form work of fiction that imagines a powerful relationship between cinema and the afterlife, and is the second in a series where creative writing is used as a springboard for the creation of a visual art exhibition; in this case a series of architectural models of classic cinemas, complete with miniature audio-visual systems that relay the narrative. The Freeze Frame exhibition and book launch will take place in mid-October at the Macquarie University Gallery.