Oliver Hull. Juried Artist
As Above, So Below
QUT Art Museum
23 June – 13 October
Artist Statement
Mullaloo and Magnus is an exhibition about an interconnected system composed of an aquifer — Mullaloo — and a supercomputer Magnus.
For millions of years, the Mullaloo aquifer was plantless and occupied only by stygofauna and troglofauna. These organisms are highly endemic, and due to their remoteness many of them have never been seen. We are only just beginning to be able to sense them through Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling technology, a technique which has only recently been made available by supercomputing. Magnus, the fastest supercomputer in the southern hemisphere, sits above the Mullaloo aquifer. As Dr Mathew Campbell and Dr Mattia Saccò process the eDNA in the water of the Mullaloo using Magnus, the waters of the aquifer flow through Magnus itself, cooling its processors, to be expelled back into the aquifer.
The relationship between these systems contains various incongruencies and poetic loops which speak to and amplify the qualities of the systems individually, but together join to make something new that can’t be easily broken down — a third system that is both old and new, alive and dead, interior and exterior, virtual and physical. The project Mullaloo and Magnus approaches this third system as integrated, interlocked, attempting to reflect and complicate these complex relationships.
Mullaloo and Magnus presents a sculpture, generative sound work and a realtime eDNA simulation made through collaboration with Dr Mattia Saccò and Dr Matthew Campbell.
This project has been made with support from the Subterranean and Groundwater Ecology (SuRGE) Group at Curtin University, Pawsey Supercomputing Center Visualisation Lab
and CSIRO.
About the artists
Oliver Hull works across digital media, sculpture and installation. He is interested in the poetic and
political properties of images and computation and their relationship to time,nature and landscape.
His work usually begins with research into places or events where these categories knit, often
using digital tools to track, model, simulate and sense as techniques to draw out the political and /
or poetic within the subject matter. Hull has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and
internationally in institutional, artist run, online and offsite settings.
Dr Matthew Campbell
Matthew Campbell is a post-doctoral researcher at the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD)
Laboratory at Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia). He is currently investigating the potential
of ancient sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA) as a tool for reconstructing the paleoecology and
paleoclimate of Western Australia during the late Quaternary period. Matt is a strong advocate for
the use of interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., environmental DNA, geochemical proxies) to address
complex environmental challenges and believes that sedaDNA has great potential for informing
conservation and management strategies in the face of global environmental change.
Dr Mattia Saccò
Mattia Saccò is a Research Associate at the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) Laboratory,
and he is the leader of the Subterranean Research and Groundwater Ecology (SuRGE) Group at
Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia). His research focuses on functional ecology of aquatic
environments, including groundwater and groundwater dependent ecosystems. He is particularly
interested in investigating diversity, food webs, energy flows and ecological niche interactions
underground through molecular (e.g., environmental DNA, functional genomics) and biogeochemical
approach
Dr Matthew Campbell
Matthew Campbell is a post-doctoral researcher at the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD)
Laboratory at Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia). He is currently investigating the potential
of ancient sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA) as a tool for reconstructing the paleoecology and
paleoclimate of Western Australia during the late Quaternary period. Matt is a strong advocate for
the use of interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., environmental DNA, geochemical proxies) to address
complex environmental challenges and believes that sedaDNA has great potential for informing
conservation and management strategies in the face of global environmental change.
Dr Mattia Saccò
Mattia Saccò is a Research Associate at the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) Laboratory,
and he is the leader of the Subterranean Research and Groundwater Ecology (SuRGE) Group at
Curtin University (Perth, Western Australia). His research focuses on functional ecology of aquatic
environments, including groundwater and groundwater dependent ecosystems. He is particularly
interested in investigating diversity, food webs, energy flows and ecological niche interactions
underground through molecular (e.g., environmental DNA, functional genomics) and biogeochemical
approaches (e.g., stable isotope analysis, carbon and nitrogen tracking) both at local and global
scales.
Credits: Oliver Hull, Dr Mathew Campbell, Dr Mattia Saccò
URL: www.oliverhull.com, https://research.curtin.edu.au/scieng/research/trend-lab/