Personal Information
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Given name: Saoirse









Surname: Higgins









Email: higginss@staff.ncad.ie









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Your contribution
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Title: Where we are is here...(after Orkney filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait) 









Format: Project presentation (2)









Main language: English









Abstract:
This project explores the human relationship with glaciers from the perspective of a non-expert like myself. Glaciers are macro scale icey breathing entities retreating, contracting and disappearing, together with their ‘glacio-script’ language and tools that describe and map them. The project is viewed through my long-term collaboration and interactions with renowned Icelandic glaciologist Oddur Sigurðsson and his extensive 3D stereoscopic slide collection. Oddur mapped all the glaciers in Iceland from a plane at 10,000ft and developed a large collection of 3D stereoscopic images taken from the 1960s to 2000s. I have been collaborating with Oddur at the Icelandic Meteorological Office since 2016 throughout my creative practice on the ‘Papay Probe’ project, where Orkney islanders sent a glacier testing probe to the Myrdalsjökull glacier: https://www.saoirsehiggins.org/art-projects/papayprobe, and my documentation film work with the Icelandic Glaciological Society - scientists and volunteers taking care of glacier monitoring with annual field expeditions taking core samples of ice and snow. According to Oddur, Iceland acts as a smaller-scale benchmark of future changes that will take place in larger Arctic-Antarctic ice. My research in this project investigates this inter-scalar positioning and benchmarking, the ‘overview’ image looking down to earth from distant satellites, the stereoscopic photo taken from a plane, and the ‘ground truthing’ view up close on the land with these different narratives echo-locating with each other. The technological viewpoint presented by experts minus people, versus what we see, feel, and touch with our senses.  It is particularly focused on community-expert-non-experts, who understand and build knowledge and ‘data’ over time relating to the environment surrounding them. 










Link to the Exposition :  (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/4203970/4203971)









Image: https://test.sar2026.ie/system/files/webform/submit_contribution/203/joku%CC%88ll.jpg









Short biographies of the presenter(s):
- Dr.Saoirse Higgins is an artist researcher based in Ireland and recently on Papa Westray, Orkney Islands.  She has a practice-based PhD from the Glasgow School of Art Innovation School, funded by the Highlands and Islands Creative Enterprise. Her practice examines our connections with the environment in the specific context of islands, islanders and the Anthropocene. She triangulates positions moving towards and from the depths of the ‘sea-sphere’ up to the ‘is-land-sphere’ and beyond to the ‘sky-sphere’. She works with video, 3d digital scans, audio field recordings, and performance events. Recent collaborations – Lough Lappers- Lough Ine; The Icelandic Glaciological Society, Icelandic Met Office, Creative Places Ocean and Environment










Previous presentations or iterations of the research:
This presentation shows a new iteration of the project showing the most recent creative developments. An earlier work in progress presentation was discussed with other projects in the Nordic Summer University Circle 10 in Helsinki 2025 and in Gothenburg. 














Requirements
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Additional information:
I will show a slide presentation with images and text, together with excerpts from this year's fieldwork in the form of audio and film. I will invite Oddur to either appear live on Zoom or record a short conversation with me for this presentation. If this is not possible, I can show some of our dialogue work from this year. 










Spatial and technical requirements :
preferably a projector and a good sound system. 










Potential risks or ethical concerns:
nothing at this stage. 










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