The Abyss
The Abyss is an iterative artistic research project that uses sculpture and new media to explore extraction in the deep ocean. The Clarion Clipperton Zone is a region 6000m under the ocean that is rich with polymetallic nodules that have grown over 500 million years around organic material like a shark tooth or a piece of coral. Metals from these nodules power technological devices and the green car revolution. The Clarion Clipperton Zone is threatened by the threat of extensive deep sea mining operations. Deep ocean communities that live in and around the abyssal plain and hydrothermal vents thrive in extreme environments. We cannot predict the harm that deep sea mining will cause them.
Vilem Flusser calls the deep ocean ‘the luxuriant garden,’ a loud, dark, and cold environment where ctenophores thrive. The Abyss imagines an alternate world where ctenophores (comb jellies) are guardians and harbingers, protecting the integrity of the deep ocean environment and imparting the wisdom of deep time. They guard the burial grounds of life on earth, keeping it for tomorrow. We seek their slow treasure for a world riddled with speed. The Abyss asks us to consider what is lost in the face of deep sea mining, and at what cost.
Tomb Keeper
4D animation, 2D animation, glass, projection mapping
2023
Drawing from mythology, 'Tomb Keeper' reimagines an underwater deity that guards the moon, the deep ocean, and the polymetallic nodule resources. Ctenophores are one of the oldest groups of animals on the planet, branching off from the evolutionary tree around 500 million years ago. The work ruminates on the perspective of creatures that embody a distinct scale of evolutionary time - what does the speed of our progress look and feel like to them, creatures who have been alive as long as the nodules? What generation memory do they hold in their DNA? The piece ruminates on the contradiction of mining a mineral that has taken over 500 million years to accumulate for the purpose of powering our extremely fast capitalist societies, yet also the potential for green energy. As a media artist who depends upon technology created using these metals, this question feels prescient and rich to dig into.
to our fast eyes they look still
4d animation with sound, 2023
‘To our fast eyes they look still’ is a short film created in 4d animation. It contemplates deep time as a lens for understanding the urgency and risks embedded in the extractive process of deep sea mining for polymetallic nodules, sulphides and other resources at the bottom of the ocean. It juxtaposes the slow sinking of a deep sea hydrothermal vent against the fast shattering of marine organisms, questioning the time scales of marine organisms, ones that are undetectable by humans.
what is 500 million years to a shark tooth?
stained glass, fishing line, 2023
"What is 500 million years to a shark tooth?" Depicts an exploding nodule and the resulting cloud of dust. The shards of glass reference the violence of deep-sea mining, and the color gradients reference the ecological impacts that mining will impart on the ocean. The work considers deep time and the ontologies of deep-sea organisms. What has taken millions of years to grow is plucked from the seabed and sucked up through the vertical space of the ocean. Organisms in this part of the ocean also create the largest daily migration by mass on the planet, called diel vertical migration. In the safety of the dark, they swim up to shallower waters to feed in the moonlight. This movement contributes to the function of the oceans at large, to their enormous carbon sequestration capacity, and as a result, to the health of our planet.