The Majestic Samaúma is a desktop focused web-based tool, which features a 3D animated model of a photogrammetry-scanned Samaúma tree in the Amazon rainforest is at its centre.

It can be used by teachers to educate students about global citizenship through an Indigenous Latin America lens.

Please note - the interactive tool is currently only available on desktop computer.

Voices for the future is an immersive art installation by New Zealand-based artist Joseph Michael. Produced in collaboration with environmental charity Project Pressure, and the permanent mission of New Zealand, the installation lit up the United Nations General Assembly and Secretariat buildings in New York ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit and global school strikes, September 2019.

VOICES FOR THE FUTURE opens with an iteration of Joseph Michael’s artwork, Antarctica: while you were sleeping and showcases powerful visuals of an iceberg slowly crashing down the sides of the 500-foot tall United Nations building, bringing the remoteness of the Antarctic to the core of urban New York.

Composer Rhian Sheehan has created a musical soundscape, which together with Michael’s work reflects how icebergs crack, shift and breathe, revealing their fragility.

Part two of the installation, visualised by Joseph Michael, features the voices of the six young advocates addressing their hopes and fears for the future, in relation to the climate crisis.

Each of the six voices spoke one of the six official UN languages and represented one of the six populated continents: Ahmed Badr - Arabic (North America), Greta Thunberg - English (Europe), Jason Guan - Mandarin (Oceania), El Mehdi Zairi - French (Africa), Karen Miluzca Pérez Panduro - Spanish (South America) Sasha Shugay - Russian (Asia).

To support the messaging, the second act is accompanied by the music of Brian Eno, as well as music by Rhian Sheehan.

"Voices for the Future - was a compelling visual prelude to the Climate Action Summit that combined a visual depiction of climate change, a collapsing iceberg, with the voices of six young people expressing their expectations and demands for a future in which leaders rise to the challenge through climate action. Art is a great medium that crosses the boundaries of language and culture as did Voices for the Future.”

Luis Alfonso de Alba, Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Action Summit

Amazon – Raised Up Sky is a new artwork that uses frontier technologies to scan significant Amazonian trees and build a fully immersive and interactive digital artwork in VR that takes viewers on a journey deep into the scientific and spiritual currents of the Amazon rainforest.

I began this project amidst the pandemic by undertaking a virtual expedition to the Amazon, conducting interviews with prominent figures in and around the Amazon to explore our physical, biological, and cultural link to trees. I have been managing a remote team who travel deep into the rainforest to scan the trees, helping me build a repository of point clouds which I am using to conduct R&D as the technology matures.

The early stages of creating this groundbreaking digital artwork are captured in a short documentary (featured below) directed by Jen Raoult. The documentary features abbreviated conversations with some of the phenomenal and passionate figures we spoke to: indigenous leaders, foremost scholars in plant physiology, photographers with unparalleled legacies of documenting this environment, and other thinkers and leaders who have dedicated their lives to understanding the Amazon from the inside out.

Against the sobering backdrop of the climate crisis, the enforced stillness of the past year has revealed the true extent of the growing disharmony between humans and the natural world. As a consequence, people are seeking to connect with nature more than ever. This artwork is about awe, wonder, resolution and renewal as we show the path to rebuilding this connection.

By developing these perspectives into an epic art installation that brings to life the scale and magnificence of the trees, my aim is to bring an intimate sense of the rainforest to urban populations, facilitating a connection between audience and the Amazon, and emphasising the rainforest’s global significance.

dark cloud / white light is a fully immersive, audiovisual synthaesthesic experience. It combines time-lapse, photography, landscape art and sound to create an intimate experience of awe and wonder.

Viewers become mesmerised by the pristine New Zealand wilderness as the work seamlessly transcends from day to night and back to day - a technique known as the ‘Holy Grail’ of time-lapse photography.

Each looping landscape features an original music soundtrack, individually composed specifically for the work. This includes collaborations with Rhian Sheehan, Michael Hodgson, Claire Cowan, Keith Ballantyne, Tristan Dingemans and William Basinski.

A behind the scenes documentary (exhibiting alongside the artworks) shows the remarkable journey Michael embarked on to capture these frames over two years.

dark cloud / white light exhibited at Pataka Art + Museum (14 July - 13 October 2013) and Waterfront Auckland's Silo Park Gallery (January 2014), Pah Homestead Auckland (August 2014) and during Wanaka's festival of colour (April 2015) with over 130,000 people viewing Michael's work to date.

Four artworks from dark cloud / white light received honorable mentions at the International Photography awards.

A short essay on the exhibition can be accessed here. 

Sample Works:

Kā Mauka Whakatipu — resilience →

Ki Piopiotahi — to catch the sun →

Watch Michael's TEDx Talk here →

Antarctica - while you were sleeping explores the intersection between humans and nature with projections of enormous icebergs onto prominent architecture in urban areas. Enabling the audience to experience the size and sound of a colossal life-size iceberg up close.

We live in an era in which human behaviour is the most dominant factor in shaping the environment, expanded megacities are largely erasing the nature on which they are built upon. To highlight this we place gigantic icebergs in the centre of important urban areas, empowering people with the awe and reverence with which we should be treating our environment.

“A truly awe-inspiring installation on a grand scale that gives a real sense of the majesty of Antarctica. Visitors hear the creak and crack as sections of ice carve away - all set to a dramatic sound score. It is a powerful experience.”

Nigel Watson - Executive Director, Antarctic Heritage Trust.

The world premier of Antarctica - while you were sleeping saw over 20,000 visitors surround Auckland’s historic War Memorial Museum. A life-size iceberg was projected onto the entire exterior of the Auckland Museum (8,800 m2 surface area).

A podcast on the trip to Antarctica to record the characters and sounds of icebergs, winner of Best Creative Feature at 2018 NZ Radio Awards, available on Spotify.

Selection of images for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award nomination 2023.

In 2022, I travelled to a remote Ashaninka tribe in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. There, I met Benki Piyãko, one of the foremost spiritual leaders of the Amazon rainforest, who founded the Yorenka Tasorentsi institute - a sanctuary dedicated to preserving indigenous knowledge, cultures, and lands. The rainforest is paradoxical - it can be both abundant and threatening. The Ashaninka tribe showed me how indigenous spirituality allows all these facets to coexist without needing the rainforest to change. The ceremonial ritual of Ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic brew, has been an essential part of this exploration. It allows one to connect with the indigenous tribes' view of the forest, each with their unique belief systems and cultures. My journey thus far has been life-changing, documented through a series of photographs that captures the beauty and significance of the rainforest and the importance of preserving indigenous knowledge and culture.

I began this project in 2019 as part of my Artist Residency at AUT (Auckland University of Technology). My initial focus was on scanning Tāne Mahuta, but the pandemic allowed me to expand the scope of the project to encompass other New Zealand trees.

Tāne Mahuta (God of the Forest) is sacred to Maori. It was an honour to be given the permission by Te Roroa iwi to ascend Tāne in the name of raising awareness of this magnificent tree, whose life is threatened by kauri dieback.

With the freedom of travel within New Zealand for most of 2020, I was able to continue to collect lidar and photogrammetric data for additional trees including the millennium tree, Taketakerau, a 2000 year old Puriri tree in Opotiki, and Ratanui, a 1500 year old northern Rata tree near Whanganui.

This expansion of the project provided the opportunity to undertake more R&D, leading to significant discoveries, results and partnerships that have elevated the results and deepened the potential around creating a digital repository of significant trees globally. Part of this success was the development of a radical new way of creating photorealistic point clouds using drone technology.

I was commissioned to produce an art installation for Tūrama Festival 2019, exploring the theme of Hōpara (Exploration).

The installation (pictured) was based on a series developed as part of my project Raised Up Sky, utilising scan data imagery from Tāne Mahuta and other magnificent kauri trees of the Waipoua forest.

The installation comprised a dual screen synchronised projection, accompanied by original audio compositions by Rhian Sheehan using four-channel sound.

Entre chien et loup is a multi-layered French expression, used to describe a specific time of day, just before night, when the light is so dim you can’t distinguish a dog from a wolf.

However, it’s not all about levels of light. It expresses that limit between the familiar and the unknown, the domestic and wild. It's an uncertain threshold between hope and fear.

This is the hour of change. 

Late at night on the 5th of February 2015, I encountered my first iceberg, instantly overwhelmed by curiosity and the infinite range of blue hues floating around in this magical playground.

In order to categorise the photography, sound recordings and film of each iceberg we gave them names. Although scientific in method, somehow the personification of ancient water molecules seemed to make the bergs ever more endearing to us.

The only remnants of their 10,000 year journey from a falling snowflake to calving off a glacier are these recordings, but their spirit lives on in the installations that are created.

Un hommage to nature and the atoms that connect us for we are biologically bound with what we see.

I’m curious about colour, and as an artist, I often use artificial light in my installations. However, there is something very compelling when you see nature producing luminous pixels of its own.

Arachnocampa luminosa is a species of glowworm endemic to the island nation of New Zealand. These long exposure photographs were captured in a number of limestone caves in the North Island. The 30 million year old formations form a majestic backdrop to the bioluminescence of the glowworms.

Check out this work on Colossal, Wired, The Verge, Juxtapoz and many more.

Behind the scenes stills from our 2015 expedition to Antarctica.

I lead a creative team that sailed to the Antarctic peninsula where we photographically mapped icebergs which will be projected onto prominent buildings across the globe.

Up late one night, wandering around the neighbourhoods of Westmere, Herne Bay and Ponsonby in Auckland, New Zealand. A heavy mist rolled in off the ocean before dawn, creating fantastical God rays between the trees and street lamps for just a precious few hours. 

The tree of light (Kauri - Māramatanga) is a playful look at New Zealand’s majestic Kauri. The artwork takes inspiration from an indigenous belief that sacred trees stand at the centre of the universe, with roots extending to the underworld and branches held up the heavens. This light sculpture however, features no roots or branches, just a slice of the picture, encouraging the viewer to delve into the depths of our consciousness. When viewing the work the artist encourages us to think of what lies beyond the visible spectrum.

Kauri; strong and magnificent. She outlived the dinosaurs, yet today stands on the brink of its own extinction.  

Photos @ Bas Van Est

"The bubbles of São Jorge…"

The series was created in the heart of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro as an antidote to the corruption, disease, crime and terrorism that so often plagues the media.

A series to remind us of our dreams… of floating iridescent miracles.. 

During my time in Rocinha (the largest favela in South America) I was greeted with vibrant colours, music, dance and some of the most friendly humans on this planet.

mais amor por favor.

dark matter universe, above and below.

Crossing the drake passage has been described as the price tag of entry to Antarctica. The peace and serenity of the Antarctic is matched only by the turbulence and drama of the Drake. You cannot have one without the other. This surely feels like the last place on earth. 

Long exposure photographs attempt to replicate the feeling of endless motion, as we crossed this most notorious stretch of salt water. 

In the end, the only way forward; to let go and become at one with the mass of swirling ocean beneath us. Our vessel tossed side to side, blurring lines between peace and pain, and finally greeted by the magical wonderland that is Antarctica.