Shared Sky

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world's largest telescope, with a square kilometre of collecting area.

As one of the largest scientific endeavors in history, the SKA represents a huge leap forward in both engineering and research & development towards building and delivering a unique instrument. The SKA will use hundreds of thousands of radio telescopes, in three unique configurations, which will be enable astronomers to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail and survey the entire sky thousands of times faster than any system currently in existence.

The SKA telescopes will be co-located in Africa and Australia. South Africa's Karoo desert will cover the core of the high and mid frequencies of the radio spectrum which will have telescopes spread all over the continent, with Australia's Murchison region covering the low frequency range and hosting the survey equipment.

the Aboriginal Australians and San gave constellations and stars their own names

I first heard about the SKA project from my husband Vince. IBM is building the computer equipment to process and store the massive amount of data which will be collected over the life of this project. It is expected to be the largest data base ever housed in one place.

The SKA will need that kind of space in an attempt to answer the big questions of astronomy. What was the Big Bang? How did the first stars form? Are we alone or is there life on other planets?

I find all of this science very interesting of course, but this original collaboration also presented an opportunity for the interaction between art and science. The SKA project represents the scientific quest for answers about our universe from the sky. But what about the theories which the aboriginal and native peoples of the areas developed? How did they explain the creation of the Milky Way? How did they use the sky to better understand nature and their world?

Some of those answers were represented in the SKA’s indigenous art/astronomy exhibition called Shared Sky. Inaugurated in Perth, Western Australia in September 2014,  Shared Sky is currently on display in South Africa at the prestigious Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

At the Cape Town inauguration of the exhibition, the South African Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor said, “ Shared Sky successfully reflects on the ancestral interpretations of the night sky from indigenous people from both South Africa and Australia, and it also touches on South Africa’s flagship science programmes.”

Venus

The exhibition stems from a vision by the SKA project to bring together under one sky Aboriginal Australian and South African artists in a collaborative exhibition celebrating humanity’s ancient cultural wisdom.

“Shared Sky connects ancient peoples who have been doing astronomy for millennia with today’s astronomers. It’s just the tools that have changed” said Simon Berry, Head of Policy Development at the SKA, who represented the SKA Organisation at the inauguration.

Being located on similar latitudes on both continents, the two SKA sites in Australia and South Africa present essentially identical views of the night sky to the peoples that have lived there for tens of thousands of years, creating a natural link between the two communities.

Shared Sky presents the richness of the artists' ancestors' understanding of the world developed across countless generations observing the movements of the sky. For instance, take the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. The San people call this constellation "Ostrich Eggs" because its appearance in the night sky signals  ostrich nesting season. Not only an important source of protein, the ostrich egg is used in many other ways by the San people. Probably the most important use is as a flask for water collection and storage. Miles away on an entirely separate continent the Aboriginal people of Australia use the same constellation which they call Nyarluwarri to determine the equally important emu nesting time.

To tell their stories, the Aboriginal Yamaji and the southern African San named other stars and constellations in the sky after things they identified with in their own landscape. The Yamaji see the Milky Way as an Emu while the San see The Milky Way as a Herd of Migrating Springbok. The San see the Southern Cross constellation as A Pride of Sitting Lions and the Yamaji see it as a flock of pink and grey galah birds. The San have names for the individual stars too. Sirius is The Honey Singer; Betelgeuse in Orion is a She-Hartebeest and Aldeberon in Taurus is a He-Hartebeest.

And their stories were interpreted in their art. On display were quilts made by the First People Artists of the Bethesda Arts Centre in Nieu Bethesda as well as beautiful dot paintings of  the Australian sky produced by artists at the Yamaji Art Centre in Geraldton, Western Australia.

Origin of Death

One of my favorite pieces was a quilt which told the San story of the Origin of Death. One night the Moon caught a little hare crying over the death of his mother. The Moon told the hare not to worry because his mother would come back from the dead tomorrow just as the Moon does every night after the sun goes down. But the hare didn't believe the Moon and cried and cried making the Moon very angry. So the Moon punished the hare and made death permanent.

The Jewel Box

My favorite dot painting was of The Jewel Box by Barbara Merritt. The Jewel Box is one of the most spectacular structures in the Milky Way and is one of the pointers of the Southern Cross. We needed a powerful telescope  to see it at Maropeng during one of their Astronomy Nights. Amazingly, the native Aboriginals can see it in their dark desert with the naked eye.

The message to be taken away from this amazing exhibit? It doesn't matter where we live on this barna (earth). Nganha (We) are all sharing the same ilgari (sky).