Beneath the Falkor (too)

In September, 2024, I completed an Artist at Sea residency with Schmidt Ocean Institute. For three weeks I had the honor to live onboard the Falkor (too) off the coast of southern Chile. My role was to make art that communicated the research being done, the project was an international collaboration led by Dr. Sebastian Watt, and titled Fire and Ice: Volcanic and Glacial Interactions. Learn more about my participation here!

This piece captures how water and sediment samples are taken from the Falkor (too): the grey device close to the surface is a CTD, which measures the conductivity, temperature, and depth of water from the surface to the seafloor. The three blue line graphs represent some of this information: the light blue line is the amount of fluorescence, correlated to where phytoplankton is within the water column; the medium blue line depicts temperature with depth; the dark blue line shows salinity with depth. The yellow device near the seafloor is an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) that is controlled by experienced pilots aboard the ship. It is being used to take sediment cores and other samples. Lastly, to the left of the ROV is a gravity core device, another way to take sediment samples, which the group deployed much less frequently for this expedition.