Jonathan Westin writes about the work he is doing on the Virtual Reality model while the team is waiting for lift-off.
When Samuel Duse, as part of Nordenskjöld’s Antarctic Expedition, arrived in Buenos Aires in 1901 he took note of the rapid development of the city: In just a few decades Buenos Aires had evolved from a small town with low one-story houses, into a city sporting palaces comparable in size and splendour to those in Europe. According to Duse, the scale of the boulevards could compete with any of those in Paris, but the speed of the traffic and the noise drew a closer comparison to the busy streets of Petersburg and Moscow. Here, the expedition was joined by American artist Frank Wilbert Stokes, and, of course, the Argentinian marine officer José Sobral - who turned out to be a very valuable team member. While Duse and the expedition only stopped for five days in Buenos Aires (which he noted was a regrettably short time for such a welcoming city), our expedition has due to a thawed landing strip at the Marambio Base in Antarctica been ”stranded” for more than twice as long.
Though the city has a lot to offer and has in no way disappointed when it comes to welcoming atmosphere (and tremendous quantities of grilled meat), not to let research time go to waste I have taken this delay as an opportunity to study the historical photos of the winter station on Snow Hill and various artefacts from the expedition displayed in the city museums. With these as source material I have been able to start work on the Virtual Reality model. While it is only a rough untextured sketch so far, when finished it will offer a photorealistic take on life in the hut in 1902-1903 with the Antarctic landscape as a backdrop. As I at this point lack any reliable measure points, this is so far mostly a photogrammetric exercise where I have to rely on known sizes of objects in the photographs and from these deduct size and distances of the surroundings. Despite these uncertainties, or perhaps because of them, it prepares me for the research and documentation that we will conduct once in Antarctica: as I familiarize myself with the interior and exterior chorography of the hut in 1902-1903, its materials and architectural composition and the many artefacts of life that marked it as a place rather than just a space, I can with keener eyes note the transformations the hut has been through these last 117 years both through use and conservation actions. During the next three months, the VR model of the winter station will also go through several transformations and refinements as we gain a better understanding for these changes, and gather the necessary data in situ.
Next, Dag Avango will tell us more about the reasons for the delay – and how it too is illustrative of the practical consequences of climate change.
Top left: the workroom housed two small tables and a small circular heating stove. Shelves have been built between the roof beams to house supplies. Top right: The frosty winter station surrounded by the necessary artefacts of an expedition. Lower left: Grunden, newly cut, after his ordeals at the Bay of Hope. Lower right: a screenshot from the work in progress modelling the winter station using historical photos.
Photos: Gothenburg University Library and screenshot by Jonathan Westin
