What is to Hand: The Fold as Landscape Within Textile Imagination

This article explores the fold and textile imagination within art by using as main case study the author's project Imaginary Landscapes. This work consists of a series of photographs taken during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK in 2020 and was motivated by a longing for spaces and places at a time of confinement. It provided an opportunity to work with "material to hand”, pointing to Martin Heidegger and Barbara Bolt's discussion of his theory regarding "handling.” The cloth as arranged or folded allows for light to enhance form whilst suggesting landscapes such as shorelines, mountains, forests, deserts or volcanoes. The discussion refers to Gilles Deleuze's reading of Leibniz, Christine Buci-Gluckmann's observations on the Baroque, and to various theoretical and artistic positions concerning the fold, drapery, and textile imagination within different visual contexts, including Giuliana Bruno's observations on the fold in relation to the screen. Imaginary Landscapes is explored with particular attention to contemporary artists Christo and Jeanne Claude, Christian Boltanski and Angela de la Cruz. The argument concludes that the fold as visual and conceptual process allows us to engage in spatio-temporal relations where the appreciation of materiality through handling/folding informs ideas of movement within and across media.

Impact of whale-watching vessels on humpback whale calling behavior on an Icelandic foraging ground during the Covid-19 pandemic

Whale-watching vessels contribute to elevated ambient sound levels in marine habitats. The reduction in maritime tourism activities during the Covid-19 pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to study the acoustic response of marine mammals to noise associated with whale-watching activities. In this study, we used acoustic recordings, visual observations, and Automatic Identification System data to determine the changes in humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae calling behavior associated with whale-watching vessels on a foraging ground in Skjálfandi Bay, Iceland. We compared pre-pandemic summer months (2018) with pandemic (2020) conditions to quantify reductions in vessel activity and determine changes in calling behavior. Broadband ambient sound pressure levels were low in both years (median ~90 dBRMS (25-1300 Hz) re 1 µPa). During the Covid-19 pandemic (2020), the number of whale-watching trips was reduced by 68.6%. The number of humpback whale call detections increased nearly 2-fold. Ambient sound pressure levels stayed the same. We found that humpback whales reduce their calling effort in the presence of vessel sound independent of the overall ambient sound. As whale-watching vessel traffic rebounds and continues to grow, demonstrating behavioral responses should inform management plans such as vessel codes of conduct and marine spatial planning.