Vis-a-thon 2020
Drawing Drifter Path
Author
PhD, University of Rhode Island, Graduate School of Oceanography
Critic
Rafael Attias
At the time of Vis-a-thon 2020, Kevin Rosa (then a PhD candidate) studied Narragansett Bay ocean currents and made movies and images of ocean model results using Matlab.
Kevin Rosa, Initial Proposal Note
”To visualize the circulation in the bay, we decided to use “drifters” which are hypothetical specks that go wherever the currents take them. Going into the 48-hour work window, we were thinking we wanted to highlight the random paths of individual drifters. Similar to a skater leaving a trail across a fresh ice rink, we can draw the drifter’s path and find clues and stories about its behavior.”
Kevin Rosa
Initial Drifter Paths Drawing on the Map of Narragansett Bay
We found that these individual paths aren’t very compelling, but when you draw many drifters something interesting happens: you start to see an outline of Narragansett Bay.
For Vis-a-thon, Kevin's project used a drawing machine to layer different drifter paths onto two-dimensional materials, allowing outcomes that show movement, time and place to emerge from empty space. Layering of these drifter paths allows for convergence and emergence of activity in Narragansett Bay and the Rhode Island Sound.
Drawings of Drifter Path with Different Tools
From Top Left to Clockwise
Water Color Drawing, Black Copic Marker Drawing, Color Crayons Drawing, Micron on Yupo Paper Drawing
Drawings of Drifter Path with Different Tools
From Top to Bottom
Color Micron Drawing, Black Pen Drawing, Black Pencil Drawing
Drawing Final Work with Pen Plotter
Typically in Rosa's research, he uses drifters to tell specific stories. He tries to strip away all the factors that aren't important in order to get the simplest useful exploration. However, by plotting so many drifters that they produce a map of the bay, a different story is told, one which highlights the inherent limitations in any simple description.
Drawing Drifter Path, Final Work
The bay is a "chaotic" system. Small changes in the initial conditions produce an unpredictable change in the outcome. As unlikely as any single trajectory seems, it will eventually happen. And the human impact is that pollution from Providence or other coastal cities won't all ride some express route out to the ocean—there will be some remnant on every beach and in every fish.
This not a random system just because it's a chaotic one. He's working with this same dataset right now and locating hotspots where he expects high concentrations of microplastics. But while it's a very practical approach, it tends to discount the beauty of the outliers. This work highlighted the more unpredictable side.
Tools Used in the Project
Adobe Illustrator Matlab Inkscape AxiDraw V3
Copyright
© Drawing Drifter Path, 2020
This material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under EPSCoR Cooperative Agreement #OIA-1655221.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.