An expedition to map and film the depth of 200m around the Aviles Canyon off the coast of Northern Spain
“Over 60% of our planet is covered by water more than a mile deep. The deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth and is largely unexplored. More people have traveled into space who have traveled to the realm of deep ocean ....”
The project is conceptually based around the idea of the physical, phenomenological, geological and sensorial changes that take place at the border between the sea and the deep sea. The deep sea is one of the great unknowns, commonly illustrated by the fact that we know less about it than we do about the surface of the moon. It offers multiple physical, emotional and philosophical narratives and contexts. Geographically the project is based at a dpeth of 200m around a feature that makes the Asturian coast such a rich environment for new forms of scientific exploration; el Cañon de Aviles.
So the project is a survey at a depth of 200m, and at this depth a number of factors coincide;
- It is the current limit of human endurance in free diving – as deep as a human has been without external apparatus of any kind.
- It is the point at which light cannot penetrate deep enough for photosynthesis, marking the border of the photic and aphotic zone
- It is the point at which the visual information changes from deep blue to black
- It defines the official transition into deep sea
- It is the depth at which the Cañon de Aviles begins to drop off from the continental shelf
- It marks a zone where recorded and experiential knowledge become scarce
The piece consists of a 3 channel video installation, a single channel documentary of its making, featuring an interview with a commercial deep sea diver, plus artefacts from the making of the work.
