This project highlights the impacts facing the ocean around Tāmaki Makaurau through an exhibition that immerses you into a speculative future:

Humans have failed to address the root causes of environmental issues. Rather, they implemented biomechanical ‘adaptations’ to enable species to survive in the degraded environment around Tāmaki.

The exhibit uses the ‘absurdity’ of this dystopian concept as a criticism of humanity’s response to environmental issues thus far. The intention is to make the solutions proposed by environmentalists appear comparatively achievable – especially if they allow the environment itself to regenerate.

Early on during the research phase, I came across this quote by Ted Chiang, a science fiction author.

“TO ME, SCIENCE-FICTION IS NOT ABOUT SPECIAL EFFECTS OR GIANT BATTLES BETWEEN FORCES OF GOOD AND EVIL…

…SCIENCE-FICTION IS ABOUT USING SPECULATIVE SCENARIOS AS A LENS TO EXAMINE THE HUMAN CONDITION.”

He highlighted the effectiveness of using fiction as a way to be critical of how humans live and act. Fiction creates a distance between the subject and the audience, allowing viewers to see, with objectivity, the absurdity of their ways.

This quote became the guiding star for this project.

To put it simply, the product of this project was a fiction: a world created to demonstrate the absurdity of our inaction on environmental issues that are ravaging our planet.

A key theme of this fiction was demonstrating just how many species these adaptations would need to be implemented upon, as shown in the image above of the Biomechanical Adaptation Organism Database.

The vectors I designed for this fiction include an immersive exhibition, a film and a physical prototype.