In April 2024 fellow artist Kate Crawfurd and I were commissioned by The Box Museum Plymouth to make an immersive art piece. A Teaspoonful of Plankton is an interactive film that educates viewers about plankton and its importance.
I have had the pleasure of working with Kate Crawfurd before on several murals and interactive art pieces, all with the narrative of bringing awareness to the ocean and plankton’s role in our ecosystem.
A teaspoonful of Plankton – making the invisible, visible.
A digital artwork on a 20m long x 2.5m high screen with 5 mapped projectors.
We wanted to connect people with the ocean, during the workshops we ran alongside this piece with public was invited to draw images of plankton and watch as they appeared on screen, becoming part of the art.
Plankton are vital to our planet. They support all life in the ocean and produce half the oxygen we breathe. From oceanic microbes, all life evolved. Yet we cannot see them. We swim through them. There can be millions in a teaspoon of seawater, beautiful, intricate life forms. Through millennia, they have lived and died, sunk to the ocean floor, where they become compressed into chalk, oil, and gas, locking away carbon from the atmosphere. Plankton power our world.
Throughout the exhibit, almost 2000 people took part in scanning plankton. We received fantastic feedback from the public. After all the hard work me and Kate put in, it was gratifying to see how well-received this project was.
Especially as this project was a huge step out of our comfort zones, both Kate and I felt challenged by this commission, which was a good thing. Stepping out of our comfort zones and exploring digital processes such as gaming software programs was really interesting and made us realise that despite being two old ladies, we were still able to learn and embrace new technologies.
