ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea of a satellite-connected, live-streaming video- and sound-recording field station on a remote and barren Svalbard island as a point of departure for a critical reconsideration of representational transmission. A consideration of the image-making recognizes Svalbard's function as an image, or a film set, as much as a fieldwork laboratory for natural scientists. The ideas behind the Arctic Dwelling Project are developed from the view that climate change is a political crisis. The Arctic environment becomes through interplay between biophysical processes, topographical sites, located practices and spaces of knowledge. Regarded as a mediatic orchestration, Martin's Eye is an experimental attempt to de-frame the Arctic landscape-as-image. Martin's Eye is, moreover, a thought experiment about a research ensemble and their expedition to Svalbard, framed by an introduction to the Arctic Dwelling Project. The artistic agenda informs a more specific focus on the artistic researcher as fieldworker and expert.
