Science

2025: Another amazing year for my videos!

2025 has ended up as another amazing year for my videos! Overall, 22 different videos have been shown in some way in 17 countries around the world for a total of nearly 60 screenings. Four videos – Eviction, DEADEYE, WHY-EEELA and The Exclusion Principle –  won awards or were short-listed for awards at international festivals.

The year began on a big note with The Taken Path, a 6-screen installation made in collaboration with Catherine Truman, exhibited at Carrick Hill as part of the 2025 Adelaide Festival. A different single screen version was exhibited later in the year at the ANAT SPECTRA conference in Queensland.

While most of my work is shown internationally, it has been especially gratifying to have videos screened at different short film festivals around Australia this year, since it is rare for local festivals to encompass experimental film as part of a general program. I will continue to support these events, even if my work does not get selected.

Most of the videos deal with the state of the environment in some way or another: climate change, habitat destruction, and the consequential effects on the survival of plants and animals, many of which we … Click here for more.

References

This is a consolidated list of the references cited in my articles about the harmful algal bloom in South Australia. Where possible, I have used reviews that cover a range of relevant material. Nearly all of them are publicly available via the DOI link. In most cases, this is just a selection of what has been published on each topic.

Aballay-González A et al (2025) Deciphering the neurotoxic effects of Karenia selliformis. Toxins 17: 92, https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins17020092

Abraham WM et al (2005) Effects of inhaled brevetoxins in allergic airways: toxin–allergen interactions and pharmacologic intervention. Environmental Health Perspectives 113: 632-637, https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.7498 ;

Abraham WM et al (2005) Airway responses to aerosolized brevetoxins in an animal model of asthma. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 171: 26-34, https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.200406-735OC ;

Aiello BR et al (2018) Fins as mechanosensors for movement and touch-related behaviors. Integrative and Comparative Biology 58: 844-859, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icy065

Akat B et al (2021) Comparison of vertebrate skin structure at class level: A review. Anatomical Record 305: 3543-3608, https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24908

Alsafy MAM et al (2025) Anatomy, histology, and morphology of fish gills in relation to feeding habits: a comparative … Click here for more.

The Taken Path – an open ended experiment in observation and embodied experience – single screen version

The Carrick Hill estate, nestled on unceded Kaurna land in the foothills of Adelaide, South Australia, presents a conundrum of the delicate connections between humans and the greater environment. Here, pure fantasy and the hard reality of both ancient and present life are encountered at once in a microcosm of the wider world.

At monthly intervals over a year, Catherine Truman and I used an iPhone and professional video camera respectively to record their walks along a defined path that traverses the natural and altered landscapes of Carrick Hill. This speculative, durational project was inspired by a poetic idea: what would we notice if we walked the same path, once a month over the course of a year and recorded the journey?

This repeated action reveals profound shifts of climate and impacts of human industry. If we keep to the path already taken, what happens to our powers of observation? If we walk it many times, does our awareness shift or is it becalmed? What can we learn anew from this repetition?

The control sequences represent the recordings of our walks along the Taken Path. Up hill, to the east, adjacent to some remnant, largely degraded native woodland, stands a … Click here for more.

DEADEYE

“they used to place coins on the eyelids of the dead so they could not follow the lives of the living … surrounded by ocean we find no clear water … in the absence of fire our soft tissues are burning … yet our eyes stay open …”

Beginning in March 2025, large areas of South Australian coastal waters have been devastated by a harmful algal bloom, leading to mass mortalities of uncountable numbers of fish, invertebrates and other marine life. The causes are complex but all arise from the unmitigated effects of anthropogenic climate change.

I made the video from images of fish that have been killed by the bloom and washed up on beaches along the eastern side of Gulf St Vincent. The audio was created from samples taken from videos of living fish, crabs and squid recorded at Seacliff beach, South Australia, in January – February 2025, before the bloom hit. The text is what the fish might say to us, if only they could…

Click here more about the bloom and how its toxins affect fish, people, and other organisms.

Because We Can

“We purify, filter, sift, rectify, unburden… stupefy, impose, stun, devastate, overwhelm… radiate, bewitch…”

But why? Why do we cause so much damage to our own environment, and then spend so much in attempting to recreate it after our own designs? What is it that underlies our desire to transform the natural world into something of our own making?

Botanic Gardens symbolise the tension between the human desire to admire nature and to control it. Almost none of the vegetation in a Botanic Garden is native to the area. Consequently, the original local environment must be skilfully managed and manipulated to provide diverse growth conditions suitable for exotic plants from all over the world. At the same time, the Gardens must be somehow attractive to human visitors. In a dry climate such as South Australia, the fundamental key to meeting both these demands is the controlled supply of water. 

Although a major function of modern botanic gardens is dedicated to preserving and understanding endangered species, many were originally established to celebrate and illustrate the achievements of the colonialist enterprise.

In this video, we see the different ways in which water inhabits the interfaces between the natural and the manufactured. Now and … Click here for more.

Toxins in the 2025-2026 South Australian harmful algal bloom

Since the middle of March 2025, South Australian coasts have been afflicted by a toxic algal bloom of unprecedented size and duration. The effects of the bloom on marine life have been devastating, with untold thousands of dead creatures, from tiny worms to large sharks, washing up on the beaches from Encounter Bay and Kangaroo Island to shores on both sides of Gulf St Vincent. Underwater surveys indicate that mortalities seen on the beaches are only a small fraction of what is happening off-shore.

As the bloom has progressed, various citizen science groups, independent researchers, university researchers and government departments have been working to monitor and understand the genesis, progression and effects of the toxic algal bloom. As a result of my background in zoology, comparative anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, and both cellular and systems neuroscience, it turns out that I am one of the few people around who has significant background knowledge of how the various algal toxins affect different cell types and organ systems is a wide range of marine creatures. Consequently, I have contributed directly to several citizen science projects and have spoken about the toxins at public forums.

Based on the talks I … Click here for more.

Toxic sea foam?

White sea foam is a natural element of the sea, especially where there is wind or wave turbulence. Normal sea water foams more than fresh water mainly because it contains more organic matter and is more dense due to its salt content. One obvious feature of the algal bloom is excessive thick, discoloured sea foam found on affected beaches, especially after storms or large swells, as seen in the video above.

Foam is a complex structure in which bubbles of air are trapped in the water. For a long lasting foam to form, it needs a combination of suspended solids and some kind of surfactant. Surfactants are chemicals like detergents and soaps that reduce the surface tension of water, thereby facilitating the formation of bubbles with very thin surfaces.

Some of the most obvious algal foams are thick and brownish in colour. These foams have high levels of suspended organic matter, mostly derived from dead microalgal cells together with decaying animals and plants killed by the bloom. The thicker foam is maintained not only by lipid surfactants but also mucopolysaccharides (mucus) from decaying algae1 together with proteins from decaying animal matter which act as a binding agent to … Click here for more.