Oceans of Time
by Marcy Cohen & Sujata Murty, Phd
Above: “Oceans of Time IV” — Marcy Cohen
Oceans of Time is a series of composites that include elements from Sujata’s dives in the Indonesian Seas and Pacific Ocean.
MEDIUM
Aluminum dye sublimation prints
PIECES
Five prints
TOPIC
Past changes in climate and ocean systems
LOCATION
Broader Indo-Pacific
"Oceans of Time I" — Marcy Cohen
"Oceans of Time V" — Marcy Cohen
Creating the Concept
Sujata Murty is an oceanographer who studies corals to understand past and future ocean conditions and climate. Marcy Cohen creates images of time that express the collision of past, present and future. Working in completely different mediums they both focus their work on time explaining why they were drawn to collaborate.
To gather data and information about coral growth bands, oceanographers jump into scuba gear and dive down among the reefs. They take cores from the corals in a manner that does no harm to the corals or ocean life. The photographs in this series, Oceans of Time, are composites that include elements from Sujata’s dives in the Indonesian Seas and Pacific Ocean, layered in a colorful, dreamlike melody with other images of time and the underwater world.
The Science Behind Oceans of Time
Above: “Oceans of Time III” — Marcy Cohen
Corals are known for longevity. An individual coral can in certain cases grow continuously for hundreds of years at a time, yet corals are extremely sensitive to changes in climate. Corals are affected by ocean warming (sometimes bleaching when temperatures rise or fall), by pollution and runoff, and by changes in the pH of seawater, which decreases as carbon dioxide enters the ocean—a process known as ocean acidification.
“By better understanding past climate variability, she hopes to improve our ability to predict future changes in a warming world.”
As corals grow, they form calcium carbonate skeletons from the chemicals within ocean waters. The density of these calcium carbonate skeletons changes as the water temperature, light, and nutrient conditions change, giving coral skeletons formed in the summer a different density than those formed in the winter. These seasonal variations in density produce growth bands similar to those in trees that allow Sujata to date coral samples to an exact year and season. As the corals grow and produce these bands, they also incorporate chemicals from the seawater that surrounds them into their skeleton. The concentration of these chemicals in the coral skeleton changes in relation to climate and environmental conditions, allowing Sujata to determine climate and ocean conditions during the seasons to centuries over which the coral grew. By better understanding past climate variability, she hopes to improve our ability to predict future changes in a warming world.
“Oceans of Time II” — Marcy Cohen
Making of the project
Art and science generally operate in separate silos. We believe creating more synergy between art and science will instill greater understanding allowing scientists to reach broader audiences and instill wide-ranging intellectual and emotional connections to their work. Our intent is to create work that displays an optimistic future realized through a constructive collaboration between science and the forces of nature.
What’s Next?
Our collaboration is continuing and during the next phase, Marcy will visit Sujata’s lab to incorporate photographs of the coral cores and other research material into the next series of images.
Marcy & Sujata
To find out more about the artist and scientist who are behind this project, visit their section of the Artists & Scientists page via the link below.