Resource depletion, wars and geopolitical tensions are shifting the destructive quest for fossil fuels and minerals to ever more remote and obscure locations on Earth. Through deep sea extraction, minerals and fuels are being obtained in underwater areas where no human has ever been. This has pressing consequences. Fossil fuels get swept into currents and tides, coming into contact with yet unknown sea creatures and microbes and permeating marine ecosystems through humanity’s multi-generational systems of extraction and deep-sea drilling. We do not know exactly what the result will be of our deep-ocean interference, or in which ways the damage and pollution will affect life in these water depths, yet change of this marine life seems inevitable.

OFF-BLACK Fountain is a symbolic representation of the exchange of harmful substances in the cycles of these ecosystems. Captured in the form of a fountain, the fluid exchange in this dynamic installation is reminiscent of the Chinese philosophical notions of yin and yang. The active state of liquid movement and textured surfaces in the installation is designed to evoke the transformation of ocean ecologies as they become contaminated with seepages of extracted oil and gas. The construction recalls the material separations and contaminations between oil and water’s fluid properties. This work seeks to visualize these acts of transmutation that emerge through these petrochemical reactions and underwater interactions.