Victoria helps bring Antarctica to the world

Victoria University is proud to be supporting New Zealand IceFest 2014, which takes place in Christchurch between 27 September and 12 October.

Snow covered mountain in Antartica

Staff and students will feature at various events and have played a significant role in developing the Antarctic Time Travel exhibition, one of the festival highlights. This interactive exhibition allows people to journey through time to experience the climatic conditions of Antarctica’s past, present and future, and has been created in collaboration with GNS Science, Lincoln University and NIWA.

Also in the line-up from Victoria, Professor Tim Naish and Dr Marc Wilson will present a talk on the Psychology of Climate Change, Professor Dave Frame, Dr Rebecca Priestley and Dr Rhian Salmon will contribute to the Breaking Ice arts-science symposium, and final year PhD student Peter Neff will be part of a panel discussion titled Climate Change is Generation Y's Issue?

Victoria and Massey universities have also partnered to bring three leading international speakers to Wellington after IceFest for a panel discussion, Reintegrating Art, Design and Science for a Future World, which will focus on innovative art/science collaborations and new models of interdisciplinary practice.

Dr Rhian Salmon, a senior lecturer in the Victoria-based New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute and Science in Context group, will co-chair the event, which is being held on Tuesday 14 October at 6pm, as part of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s At Six series.

The guest speakers, who will present their ideas and future visions, are:
• David Buckland, creator and Director of Cape Farewell
• Frances Whitehead, Professor of Sculpture and Architecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Natalie Jeremijenko, artist, designer, engineer and Associate Professor in Visual Art at New York University.

In addition, the Science in Context group Victoria has partnered with the University of Otago, Wellington, the British Council of New Zealand and Made in Scotland, to bring the award-winning one person play HeLa to Wellington, for a one night only performance on Thursday 16 October at 7pm.

The play takes its inspiration from the true life story of Henrietta Lacks and the extraordinary life of the HeLa cell line.

For more information about the At Six event in Wellington, visit http://bit.ly/1uI4ABG.

For more information about the play HeLa, visit www.otago.ac.nz/heLa.

For more information about New Zealand IceFest, visit http://nzicefest.co.nz/.