Our Plastic Seas

Interactive installation

Our Plastic Seas is an immersive installation that uses real-time motion tracking and computer-generated imagery to create a responsive underwater environment. As the viewer stands before the screen, their presence slowly registers: a human figure gradually emerges, coalescing from drifting threads of ghost nets and plastic detritus. Movements are mirrored on screen, but with a spectral quality—delayed, refracted, and incomplete. The longer one remains, the more defined the figure becomes, drawing the viewer deeper into an intimate, unsettling encounter.

This constructed figure is not simply a reflection, but an analogue of marine life trapped in human waste. Suspended in artificial currents and ensnared in synthetic debris, the viewer’s silhouette inhabits the role of the entangled other—momentarily assuming the place of those creatures whose suffering is often flattened into symbolic imagery. In doing so, the work invites a visceral form of identification with species typically viewed at a distance.

From the figure’s surface, streams of digital microplastics visibly disperse—subtle but constant. This shedding contaminates the surrounding environment, clouding the water with particles that at first resemble organic matter—plankton, spores, life. But what appears fertile is in fact pernicious: synthetic debris masquerading as sustenance. The viewer’s presence becomes a quiet force of degradation, a metaphor for the unnoticed consequences of everyday life—routines and habits that seem benign, yet contribute to the wider erosion of ecological systems. The figure does not act violently, yet its impact is cumulative and unavoidable.

As the environment responds to the viewer's sustained presence, it too begins to degrade. A once-pristine digital seascape becomes increasingly saturated with synthetic matter. What begins as an encounter with fragile beauty is gradually transformed into a meditation on exhaustion, accumulation, and the shifting ethics of spectatorship. Our Plastic Seas invites reflection not only on the vulnerability of marine ecosystems, but on the entangled role of the human within them.

Our Plastic Seas was commissioned for the BOIL Climate Festival at Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, Porto, Portugal, in September 2024.

See also: Boiling Point, a companion installation for BOIL.