A project originally commissioned by Te Tuhi as part of their Te Moana Nui ā Kiwa weather station for the global World Weather Network will be shown in 28° North and Parallel Weathers, a new iteration at leading contemporary art centre KHŌJ in New Delhi.

Opening on 31 January 2024, Ngā Raraunga o te Mākū: the data of moisture is an installation visualising data, sounds and images from Haupapa Glacier, Aoraki Mt Cook, live-streamed to KHŌJ in New Delhi. At the opening event, sound artist/designer Rachel Shearer (Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Pākehā) will also perform live sound of processed field recordings from Haupapa glacier and other locations from Aotearoa NZ.

Ngā Raraunga o te Mākū: the data of moisture will be shown alongside other selected works commissioned for the World Weather Network by Shahana Rajani and Zahra Malkani, Raqs Media Collective, Mithu Sen and Atul Bhalla (from KHŌJ’s weather station).

The original project, Haupapa: The Chilled Breath of Rakamaomao (2022–2024), began as an online weather report, and is still streaming live on the World Weather Network and Te Tuhi websites. Shearer, Janine Randerson, and Stefan Marks collaborated with orator Ron Bull, of Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe and Waitaha whakapapa, to develop a creative “weather report” from Haupapa/Tasman glacier, Aotearoa’s fastest growing body of wai, water, and a glacier formed from a deep exhalation of Aoraki, the ancestor-maunga, as he readied to speak. The project responds to the “hau” of Haupapa, translated fluidly as moisture, air, breath, wind, tears and vitality.

“Through audio-visual modes of gifting and listening, we approach Haupapa as ancestor, a shape-shifting collaborator. Tiny bubbles of ancient breath and atmosphere are pressed inside Haupapa’s glacial ice—including sea breezes, pollens, carbon dioxide and methane, as well as the ash of Australian fires. We collectively attune to the glacier through Kai Tahu cosmologies, instruments of science, audio hydrophones and underwater camera receivers to more-than-human scales of aural and visual perception.”

The software selects from a set of underwater images of glacial fragments and meltwater. Live hydrophone and atmospheric sound recordings are ordered by qualities of sound and video, decided by the weather conditions of Aoraki. On days of high solar radiation, bright, clear ice and sun predominate and move the images on screen accordingly; on cloudy days, the image darkens. Weather patterns are experienced through pulsing data patterns, voice and our ears.

“The accelerating change of state of Haupapa glacier into the grainy liquid expanse of Haupapa awa, the lake below, is a highly visible indicator of climate catastrophe. We respond to an urgent tipping point where we face water scarcity in some parts of our isles, and vanishing glaciers, flooding, severe storms and coastal erosion that meets rising seas on the other, as the whenua sinks incrementally back down to our watery origins.”

The artists have shown the artwork in various iterations at Blue Oyster in Ōtepoti Dunedin and at the December 2023 SIGGRAPH Asia Conference in Sydney (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques), which prompted the invitation to be hosted by KHŌJ International Artists’ Association in Delhi.