Ars Bioarctica

My residency with Ars Bioarctica runs from November 23rd until December 21st (winter soltice) 2014 My project 'A Polar Night Study' has been informed by my fascination with sleep science and circadian rhythm entrainment.  For near on 28 days I have been engaged in a performative 'forced desynchrony' study of my own body clock. Residing at the Kilpisjarvi Biological Station,  I have been running on a 28 hour cycle of 9 hours 20 minute for sleep and 18 hours 40 minutes per subjective 'day'. Using the polar night's long hours of darkness (and hence deprivation of the body's major exogenous zeitgeber- sunlight) as a clean slate against which to tinker with the machinery of my own circadian rhythm I have harnessed my out-of-step wake time to explore Kilpisjarvi's unique environment from multiple temporal perspectives. A full explanation of my project can be found on my website along with the more detailedproject blog. In my adventures into all the 24 hours I have come to learn so much about the polar night and this unique Arctic environment in which it thrives. I have hiked up Saana, Pikku-Malla and Salmivaara... I have discovered what it's like to go running in -18C and stood in the wilderness and begun to see how the time scales of all bodies here, water, earth, sky and animal oscillate about each other at different frequencies and how this makes every hour unique... I have learned about the sounds (and safety) of lake ice expanding and contracting. I have seen seen how all different types of light shape the complex nature of the polar night- moon, sun. aurora and man-made. Through research and conversation I have discovered how others change and cope with the dark; how reindeer don't appear to have a true circadian rhythm and how, in turn, their herders harbour their own unique sleep/wake cycle. In short I have been lucky enough in my project to live and experience these and so many more things that make this place so fascinating, while simultaneously illuminating the fact that I have merely scratched the surface of my subject. A full explanation of my project can be found on my website along with the more detailed project blog.