Intro to Ocean Clarion Call

By Kyna Leski

It is clear that human civilization has impacted the earth’s ecosystems. And, at the same time that the ‘earth system’ sweet spot[1] which gave rise to human civilization—is far more delicate than we realize.

The Anthropocene,[2] defines the most recent geologic time period as one that recognizes human influence on atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, and biospheric systems. Recognizing the consequences of our actions is one thing, but intentionally directing actions as part of a field of connected consequence is another. Directing the field of connected actions and consequences is design. We have entered a time of choosing whether or not to design the world we live in.

We already have to determine which living beings are raised for consumption, which endangered species are worth fighting for, and at a point of choosing whether or not to buffer the ocean that we have acidified. As the earth’s population has tripled in my lifetime, we are moving towards a time when we will have to determine who gets to live a full life and how.

YOMO—Your Ocean, My Ocean is a collaborative performance project conceived by Professor John Crawford, at the University of California, Irvine.

Our contribution with this iteration of YOMO–took the approach of seeing the Ocean, as a significant player in the World that we design.

We understood the Ocean, not as a resource for human civilization, but as our client.

The first step which we took, which is the same step we take with any design project, is to listen to the client’s needs.

We sought out a leading environmentalist as the “client rep” and an Ocean Scientist as a consultant.

And we, as architects, worked with measure, scale, and embodiment in developing a language to bridge the gap from immensity to vulnerability; from here and now to there and then.

I invite you to hear the Ocean’s Clarion Call.

[1] Geologists refer to the Sweet spot of the last 11,700 years as the Holocene.

[2] In 2000 Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer coined the termed, Anthropocene in support of the idea that humanity could affect the whole earth system. The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time

Click on the Links below for short clips of parts of the animations: