kelp dreams

by Zeynep Abes and Ellie Schmidt

Macrocystis kelp is a giant of the ocean, growing over a foot a day from murky depths. These algal ocean forests have held critical habitat for fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals for thousands of years. kelp dreams is a portrait of Southern California kelp forests, woven from field photogrammetry scans and hydrophone recordings. Can immersive digital media visualize the constant movements of the ocean, interspecies dynamics, and our embodied human relationship to them?

Video by Zeynep Abes

Audio design by Ellie Schmidt