THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN

THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN explores connections between water, time, heat, silica and silicone, and our own beginnings as watery beings. A network of glass forms transports water and air through a series of pathways. They create a timed organism that uses water to transfer heat from a computer running a simulation of an ocean floor, to a tank holding a soft robotic manta ray.

'The computer generates heat as a by-product of its efforts to render the simulation and is cooled by water. This warmer water becomes an environment for the artificial manta housed in its amniotic world, coupling organism and machine, chip and fetus.

The story of our transformation takes place in water, inside the amnion, a bubble of protective fluid. We have no memory of this place, but our body remembers. Our middle ear retains a record of this moment, vestigial features of our time as fish. This transformation from sea to land also owes itself to silica, one of the most common substances on Earth, formed when massive stars explode. This star dust permeates our bodies and all aspects of the natural and built world through a variety of geological, technological and biological transformations. Silica deposits, transported by the water of subterranean rivers, rest deep in the earth, made solid over time.'—Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson