Around the Spiral Jetty. To the rescue of brine shrimp!

Date: September 14, 2021
Location: At the Great Salt Lake near the Rozel Point Peninsula

Description of the event

The Polish artist Dr. Justyna Górowska and the Polish academic Dr. Ewelina Jarosz arranged a Augmented Reality (AR) project, which is a response to the shrinking Great Salt Lake, which dropped this year to its lowest levels in recorded history. The catastrophic condition of Utah’s so called natural wonder is attributed to the ongoing extreme drought and the reduced snowpack, a part of global climate change processes. The brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) is one of the oldest and most precious inhabitants of The Great Salt Lake. These tiny crustaceans, with precarious bodies and extra strong eggs, are a pillar of the local ecosystem and a crucial link in a food chain that feeds fish and millions of migratory birds. You may also know them as “sea monkeys,” a magic instant life product that has been sold mostly to children in America since 1957.

The project combines artistic and ecological goals. It is a dialogue with the monumental work of the American artist Robert Smithson, “Spiral Jetty”, one of the most recognizable works created in the field of land art, i.e. transforming nature into a work of art. The gigantic work of art, visible from Earth’s orbit, located in Salt Lake, Utah, is the cornerstone of 1970s American art. However, in the times of the ecological crisis, this artefact is meaningful in a new way.

The key element of the film is a result of field research and focuses on the fauna and flora surrounding Smithson’s monumental sculpture – artistically transformed.

About the Artemia App

The AR application Artemia made by Dr. Justyna Górowska was written for Android. It uses AR technology to help you to appreciate and love the depleting biodiversity of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. It is launched it two ways:

1. It projects the AR brine shrimp from a physical target. To experience the AR brine shrimp, direct on the QR code below your phone camera with the opened app.

2. You must be in the GPS location: 41 ° 26 ’15 .7 ‘N 112 ° 40 ´07 .8, then open the Artemia app, and point the camera of your Android smartphone to the surroundings.

The application is available to download on Play Store (Android 11, 12 system). This app is also kick-off the Digital Blue Humanities Archive, which will have its premiere during Ars Electronica 2021.

To download the app, please click this LINK or using the QR code below.

We are specifically looking to involve / engage with others in the region who care about the health of our more-than-human water and creature neighbors for a related media project. If you are interested in this, and are available in Utah between September 3 and 19, please contact Dr. Ewelina Jarosz: ewelina.jarosz1@gmail.com

The concept: Dr. Ewelina Jarosz
The artistic director and AR specialist – Dr. Justyna Górowska.
Director of the performance: Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield
Costumes: Martyna Koltun

Justyna Górowska is an artist and collaborator in the interdisciplinary projects, including art, technology, and social activism. Through performative and interactive experiences of advanced technologies and digital art her projects raise of societal and environmental collapse. Born in 1988, she is based in Skawa, in the Western Beskid mountains of Poland. She received her PhD from the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Studies, University of Arts in Poznan. Her projects were presented, e.g., in Berlin (Freies Museum, 2009), Quebec City (Le Lieu Gallery, 2014), Jakarta (National Gallery of Indonesia, 2016), Warsaw (Museum of Modern Art, 2017), and New York (Art in General, 2017). See more at: https://justynagorowska.com/

Partners of the project: E.A.R.T.H Lab UC Santa Cruz, The Kosciuszko Foundation, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Media partners: E.A.R.T.H Lab UC Santa Cruz