EMPTY SEA ?

Empty Sea?” an interactive art installation, speaks the universal language of aesthetic emotion to deliver a strong message: we must stop overfishing. It is the survival of oceans, and men, which is at stake. In parallel, by exposing the ocean’s frailty, “Empty Sea?” makes us feel our own transience.

“Empty Sea?” is composed of graphically designed fishes, with unreal colors. While having the appearance of fishes, they are floating in air.

This is not a realistic scene but a phantasmagoria inspired by the Japanese windsocks representing carps. As is such, this type of fish is more familiar with fresh water than with the oceans!

Interactive... ...Symbolic Strenght

When entering, visitors perceive the brightly illuminated “Kois”.

But as soon as they approach them, the Kois lose their brightness and become ghost like. This reflects the ever growing human pressure against fish and oceans.

However the “Kois” regain color and life when visitors throw some coins on the basin’s floor, representing the ocean.

Thanks to its interactivity, “Empty Sea?” plays on two opposing symbols:

- negative one, directly experienced by visitors when they see the “Kois” losing their luminous vitality;

- positive one, when visitors re-enact a universal and age-old tradition by throwing a coin in a basin.

This gesture of thanks towards the nourishing benefits of water and fish also symbolizes the actions that visitors should undertake to protect the oceans against the numerous threats they are facing

More fundamentally, this unstable balance between these positive and negative dynamics evokes the efforts we have to do to augment or restore our own vitality against its inevitable waning.

An Asian inspiration… …into a universal message

In Japan a major feast called “Koi Nobori” takes place at the beginning of May. Windsocks representing carps are exhibited. They symbolize courage and perseverance.

This typical Japanese feast finds its own source in a Chinese legend. According to this legend a particularly resilient carp swam upstream as if on a mission. Moved by such obstinacy, the gods turned her into a beautiful water dragon that flew majestically over the tumultuous waters.

Beyond this Asian inspiration, the symbol of fish as a source of life and fecundity is shared all over the world as witnessed by the numerous sacred springs and basins populated with fish.