Ocean Exhibit Poetry
The Ocean project explores the in depth perspectives about the ocean and how we as humans connect to it,
displayed through contemporary artist and researchers collaborating together creating exhibitions,
showing a deeper perspective of the oceans relationships with nature and the land.
I chose a video piece called “Keepers” by artist Mat Chivers,
11 minutes in a dark,cinema style room,
a large projection on the wall,
it showed a 360 degree pan of the Eddystone lighthouse,
12 miles out at sea from Plymouth,
it was playing an audio of a male voice describing different story narratives,
happening out in the ocean.
At first hearing I couldn’t make out what he was talking about,
he used lots of complex language.
By the time I figured out what he was describing,
another string of different sentences overlapped,
they blended together smoothly in the beginning,
almost like a metaphorical sea,
first starting off as calm waves lapping at the shore,
slow and long sentences.
Then a storm of rapid waves crashing in the form of quick fire vocabulary,
he was whispering then shouting as they all layered on top of eachother,
it was overwhelming as the voices increased in volume,
layering and interconnecting creating a busy space,
showing the intricate links between humans and the sea,
how they react to eachother,
they projected a series of short descriptive sentences onto me as a viewer,
overstimulating me but in contrast,
still created an engaging environment,
I couldn’t completely keep up with what was happening.
The exhibition leaflet, gave more detail on this film piece,
it was about symbols of warning,
spoken narratives from different time frames,
telling a story,
demonstrating a mixture of,
past,
Present,
and future,
accounts about people’s experiences and how they responded out at sea.
It was a new visual experience,
what I also found riveting was that I could focus my hearing on the different voice audios, allowing me to pick and choose what I wanted to hear,
doing further in depth research into Mat Chivers he looks at “human and more-than-human consciousness”,
I felt this showed in his piece as it created a group of voices mimicking the state if mind sets in the narratives,
I liked the clear camera angles of the lighthouse in focus,
showing the broad sea stretching on.
We had visited the Marine Station and we were spoken to by Dr Keiron Fraser,
the Head Professor there,
he spoke to us about various data collections methods,
exploring underwater photography,
looking deeper into what is in the ocean beneath the surface,
helping me to understand the approaches used in the Ocean piece,
to capture the footage,
linking in to how they took in information.
The Marine station compared to the film piece shows a more scientific approach,
using scale to measure the rising tide,
using submarines to see the ecosystems within the sea,
gaining knowledge about the ocean,
where as the “Keepers” exhibit showed a contemporary response,
forming multiple narrative stories,
a cinematic experience,
surrounding you in voices,
projected on to the lighthouse to show its job.
As a warning symbol.
Comments