From the Seattle Symphony web site, "Two summers ago, National Geographic explorers Steve Boyes and Jer Thorp led a “live-data” expedition across Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Boyes, a South African conservationist dedicated to preserving rare birds, learned about the Okavango from the Bayei Bushmen. Multi-disciplinary artist Thorp gives meaning and narrative to data through the creation of visualizations, sculpture, performance and interactive tools. Combining dugout canoes and GPS, and sharing all their data in real time, their team traversed this challenging wetland filled with elephants, lions, hyenas, hippos and crocodiles — while thousands around the world followed online. This summer, Steve and Jer will conduct a mega-transect of the Delta, originating in Angola and flowing across the Kalahari desert. The goals: to capture even more data about a region that Steve aptly calls “the beating heart of the Kalahari” and to convince the governments of Angola and Namibia to protect the waters leading into the Delta, which harbors and protects some of the planet’s most varied and abundant wildlife."