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6 minutes 15 seconds loop

a video sculpture
11″ H x 42″ W x 34″ D

This work is a video of the Acqua Alta/high water in Venice projected on a wooden sculpture that is an abstraction of a fossil shell from the Jurassic period (199.6 – 145.5 million years ago). The sculpture is made of 5mm Baltic Birch plywood.

Venice is treasure of western culture and civilization, particularly the Renaissance. Yet it has been impacted by the extraction of resources (primarily large scale ground water extraction by industry) and by climate change, resulting in the phenomenon of Acqua Alta. The city is very vulnerable to changes in sea level, as it is built on low islands in the Venetian Lagoon which have existed since the end of the last Ice Age.

Since the Acqua Alta has been slowly drowning a city and a culture, we thought it was appropriate to combine these images of the flood waters with a beautiful fossil, Malaptera Ponti – a life form that also “drowned.”

The video portrays the actual colors of the play of light on the water in Venice – a dance of rich cerulean and cobalt blues, golds and pinks. These are the same colors found in the paintings of many Venetians, particularly Tiepolo and Tintoretto.


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