WILDERNESS

USER

SHERIDAN COLEMAN

SHERIDAN COLEMAN

Cover: Sheridan Coleman Online Barrow Island Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015 watercolour on paper

WILDER-NESS USER 6 - 21

JUNE 2015

THE MODERN TRAVELLER

SHERIDAN COLEMAN

WILDER-NESS USER

It has been the catalyst for feats of impossibility and will define us for as long as we survive on this little planet. We want to know the world and how it works, to pursue knowledge until every last stone has been upturned. It’s a curious thing, then, to think that there are landscapes we will simply never visit, at least not in our lifetime. The world is more interconnected than ever before, and yet there remain places so desolate, so isolated and so treacherous, that even time, exertion and money seem unlikely to allow us access. Curiosity alone is no ticket to the wilderness.

It is rare to meet a person who claims not to like travel—the spirit of exploration hasn’t deserted us just yet. However I doubt that those who espouse a love of travel would describe the physical act of travelling as enjoyable. Nobody likes airport queues, endless customs checks, waiting, the excruciatingly long time it takes to actually get anywhere. Cramped and uncomfortable, flying brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people. No, it isn’t the travelling, but the destination that inspires a love of travel. So – what if you could ‘travel’ without ever leaving your bedroom? What if all you need to see the world was a reasonable Internet connection?

You can, of course. Enter Google Earth: climate and comfort controlled travel, allowing us to peer into places we could never see in reality. The stoic and harsh landscapes we cannot master will continue to evade us physically, yet as modern travellers, we can see them from the vantage point of our computer screens.

The number of people who can describe seeing the moon up close with their own eyes is few. The fact that anybody has done so has come to symbolize the pinnacles of human achievement. Perhaps it would be an insult to the achievements of Neil and Buzz to mention our own explorations, but now we too can explore the moon’s surface in close detail using Google Moon. We can pinpoint the exact locations of significant research expeditions, follow the trails of the rovers, see the landing sites, and imagine ourselves making the same journey. We can almost consider our online lunar sojourn as a pilgrimage in veneration to human progress and the wonders of the universe.

Curiosity is an insatiable and uniquely human thirst.

Few journeys are as grand and humbling as the Apollo missions, and yet we might simulate these journeys in introspection, dressed in pyjamas, in our living rooms, on our phones.

Then there are the sacred landscapes, which explorers are forbidden to traverse. We now have the ability to take a peek at places like the holy mountain Gangkhar Peunsum, which were once unseeable. As anonymous virtual onlookers, we might irreverently transcend these written and unwritten barriers, with no earthly repercussions (other than the weight of our own morality). Online, the world holds few such boundaries, and we are masters of our own journeys, deciding when and where we go.

While Google might be the ultimate labour-saving device, it isn’t without its flaws. Bouvet Island, a volcanic glacial landmass and dependency of Norway, is a place that just isn’t feasible for humans

to visit. It’s out of the way and extremely expensive to reach, and even though it might just be a pile of rock, volcanic sediment and glacial ice, it’s mystery is enough to seek it out. The island’s harshness and isolation is reflected in its appearance on Google Satellite: all that is visible is a pixelated mass of cloud hovering over the sea, shrouding the land. Bouvet Island seems tantalisingly close, but the glitches and imperfections that are an inevitable symptom of the virtual landscape prevent us from getting any closer. How can we know what is hidden under that menacing mass of cloud when it is so difficult to distinguish between what is really there, and what is an electronic mistake?

The truth is, digital journeying requires imagination. The process of seeing digital landscapes is appended by gathering information on the climate, ecosystems and history through online research.

Sheridan Coleman, The Curator Sophie Bower-Johnston as the Artist on Google Earth (detail), 2015, photograph

With this knowledge, we can create our own imagined experience of a place—reconstructing how it would feel, sound, and smell. Online, we are unlimited overseers, creating worlds from afar, each of which is unique to the person creating it. We become explorers of the mind.

Though as modernistic travellers we possess enriched potential for imagination, vision and projection, our sight is limited to the fabric of the online world. We see only what we are allowed to see, our access provided by the providers. Some places must remain invisible, omitted from the digital landscape because of algorithmic error, political censorship, delay in visual updates, and gaps in infrastructure. This begs the question: how much of what we see is a true reflection of what is really there? Perhaps in our virtual wanderlust, we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Sheridan Coleman, Online Barrow Island Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, watercolour on paper

After all, this digital landscape is merely a construction, a tool that informs us about the world, whilst nonetheless mediated by the ability of companies, governments and algorithms to release or withhold clear pictures of the earth. Though remoteness or climactic inhospitality may no longer limit what we can see, Google Earth is not an electronic key to all the mysteries of the world. For the time being, all we can hope for is to satiate some of that innate curiosity. Comfortably.

Emma Hussein

Sheridan Coleman, detail, Online Bouvet Island Wilderness Expedition Notes, 2015, acrylic on board

Bouvet Island (54°25.8’S, 3°22.8’E) is an uninhabited volcanic island located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the world’s most isolated island, comprised of volcanic basalt. More than 90% of its surface is encrusted by glacial ice. The island is outside of trade routes by many hundreds of kilometres and its almost-vertical shores and vertiginous peaks make landing by boat or plane more or less impossible. After a minor volcanic eruption in 1955 created a minor level promontory, a 1964 party managed to land a helicopter for a 45-minute expedition, during a brief drop in the surrounding 50-knot winds.

Wilderness User is a visual chronicle and disambiguation of six wholly online exploratory expeditions into wilderness landscape:

Macquarie Island (54°30’S, 158°57’E) is a small island located between New Zealand and Antarctica. The entirety of the world’s Royal Penguin population nests on Macquarie Island as part of its annual migration. The island is a world heritage site and its only human population is an itinerant group of AAD (Australian Antarctic Division) researchers, numbering between 20 and 40, in a research station on the northern tip of the island.

Sheridan Coleman Online Macquarie Island Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, acrylic on board

Sheridan Coleman, The Artist Lauren Cowdrey as the Artist on Google Earth, 2015 , photograph

Sheridan Coleman, detail, Online Barrow, Alaska Wilderness Expedition Notes, 2015, acrylic on board

Barrow (71°17’44”N, 156°45’59”W) is a remote community situated on the northernmost tip of the United States, in Alaska. Barrow is inside the Arctic Circle, and due to being surrounded by ocean and frozen plains, it has an extreme wind chill and frequent white outs. Barrow’s small population annually experience a high temperature above freezing on around 120 days each year and below 18°C on over 160 days a year. Snow falls year round.

Sheridan Coleman, Online Barrow Island Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, watercolour on paper

The Antarctic Pole of Inaccessibility (82°06’S, 54°58’E) is the name of the point on the Antarctic continent that is the most interior and furthest from all surrounding shoreline access points. Vostok, a Soviet research station, was erected at this location in 1958, and was in use for less than a year. The now-defunct station has the world’s coldest year-round temperatures (averaging -58.2°C), and today the station is almost entirely submerged beneath accumulating banks of snow, however a bust of Lenin that was mounted on the roof can still be seen.

The Moon is a natural satellite orbiting the Earth, formed around 4.5 billion years ago. Its orbit speed is roughly 1km per second, and it makes one full orbit of the earth every 27.3 days. In a 1967 treatise, Russia and the US declared the moon to be the “province of all mankind”, however only 12 humans have walked on its surface, over the course of five Apollo shuttle voyages between 1969 and 1972.

Sheridan Coleman, Online Lunar Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, acrylic on board

Sheridan Coleman, Online Lunar Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, acrylic on board

Sheridan Coleman, detail, Online Gangkar Peunsum Wilderness Expedition Notes, 2015, acrylic on board

Sheridan Coleman, detail, Online Gangkar Peunsum Wilderness Expedition Notes (detail), 2015, acrylic on board

Gangkar Peunsum (28°02’54”N, 90°27’15”E) is mountain that constitutes a significant peak in the Himalayan ranges, located on the border of Bhutan and China. The region has been poorly mapped and the mountain’s summit has never been climbed. In 1994, all mountaineers were officially prohibited from attempting the climb out of respect for its role as a sacred spiritual site in the local Vajrayana Bhuddist religion.

Our Creative Associates:Elizabeth Bills (Media Liaison) Claire Bushby (Volunteer Coordinator)Rachel Ciesla (Special Projects) Johnson Doan (Marketing Officer) Matthew Giles (Media Liaison) Alison Hayles (Special Projects) Zoe Swainston (Marketing Officer) Vynka Topham (Studio Co-ordinator) Mark Wahlsten (Graphic Design) Henry Whitehead (Photographer)

Paper Mountain is an artist run initiative co-directed by:Alisa BlakeneyMinaxi MayKali NormanDesmond TanAlina TangEmiko Watanabe

Design by Mark Wahlsten Printed by Graphic Source

All photos courtesy of the artists, unless otherwise stated.

Paper Mountain is on Noongar land.

Upstairs, 267 William St, Northbridgeinfo@papermountain.org.aupapermountain.org.au

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The artist would like to thank: Curtin University of Technology and the Australian Postgraduate Award, Dr. Ann Schilo, Nicole Slatter, Emma Hussein, Tegan Miller, Sophie Bower Johnston, Lauren Cowdrey, Rusty, Suzie & Dim Sim, Desmond, Kali, Mark, Liz and everybody at Paper Mountain, Common Writing and Gareth Hart.

Paper Mountain would like to thank their magnificent Gallery Attendants: Lily Bennion, Danielle Blackwell, Natasha Bloomfield, Ashley Bonser, Caroline Dale, Laura Folan, Caroline Forsberg, Jenni Gray, Karl Halliday, Karolina Koszelski, Mei Leong, Alice Lynch, Grace McKie, Bronwyn Mory, Holly O’Meehan, Jill O’Meehan, Annie McLoughlan, Phoebe Mulcahy, Amy Perejuan-Capone, Ashley Ramsey, Indi Ranson, Kat Scarff, Mathew Siddall, Jasmine Uitermark-Thaung and Mark Wahlsten

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