Driven by a desire to connect the public to the deep ocean in the face of our climate crisis, the Immersion Project is a vision for a large-scale, immersive and interactive art installation inspired by deep-sea coral forms which will have a second life as an artificial reef in the deep sea. The Immersion Project is an interactive and experiential form of outreach that will harness a broad public audience, diverse in demographics, through its placement in multi-disciplinary venues including art, science, education-based, and public spaces. This project will have a significant positive environmental impact on the Gulf of Mexico’s deep coral gardens damaged during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The exhibition will also be a platform to shed light on our delicate ecosystem. Through public talks and panels about the reef damage, we can forge a dialogue about environmental stewardship in the face of climate change and other human-borne impacts. Through a coordinated effort with Dr. Erik Cordes, advisor on the NOAA Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan, a modular installation will be deployed as a form of remediation through direct human intervention in the process of ecological recovery and restoration.

 The unique dual role of the Immersion Project, as both traveling art exhibition and artificial reef, underscores a key mission of the project: to create connections through immersion, both between the viewer and the deep ocean environment through a compelling art experience, and between the submerged artificial reef installation and the ecosystem that it supports.