About

Started as the 3D interactive art game, the World of Plankton, The Aquatic Messenger is the next episode of Rensselaer’s art/science educational underwater experience. The project is designed to inspire and engage youth 7 to 18 (and beyond) at the unseen micro-scale of phytoplankton and zooplankton in order to gain first-hand experience about the drama of underwater life and its serious potentials for environmental impact. Explore the awesome wonders lying in our waters!

We are resonating creative artistic inquiry and practice with the evolving scientific research of the Jefferson Project, a partnership between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM, and The Fund for Lake George in revolutionary environmental monitoring and remediation that combines a network of sensors in and around Lake George in measuring physical, chemical, and biological parameters with a far reaching outlook to help solve our earth’s freshwater crisis for “all kind”. We use the term “all kind” here to be inclusive of all of earth’s inhabitants, regardless of gender, nationality, or race.

The Aquatic Messenger seeks ways to expand this inquiry and connect into a broader global and cultural understanding by creating artworks and environments that will enable us to see and hear what the lake is telling us as a total entity, and lead us to a deeper wisdom about how and why we need to protect our waterways.


Together we are asking the questions that no one discipline alone can ask.


        • Resonating with the spirit of Galileo’s Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), The Aquatic Messenger is a time travel VR work, exploring the microscopic and planktonic life indicators of freshwater ecology


        • Created in conjunction with the micropaleontology and freshwater plankton research being done on the Jefferson Project and Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) at Lake George


        • Using advanced game and simulation technology, a team of student and faculty artists, scientists, music composers, programmers, and game designers are creating an artwork where these scientific discoveries will be revealed experientially



Travel through deep time and the corresponding aquatic life in the lake region:


The Paleozoic Era

Cambrian Epoch: 490 million years ago when the sea covered the lake with regional stromatolites from cyanobacterial mats


Devonian Epoch: 350 million years ago, “the age of fishes”, as revealed geologically in the Helderbergs


The Cenozoic Era

Pleistocene Epoch: 20,000 years ago when the Wisconsin ice sheet retreats, revealing hidden life including the Cohoes Mastodon, Ostracodes, Diatoms and Testate Amoebae


The Modern Era

Modern A: Native inhabitants, Impacts of settlement in 1850’s, salt in the 1970’s



Modern B: Current times with the instruments and data of the Jefferson Project sensor web, the Fund for Lake George and others helping to keep the lake clean


The FUTUREs

What choices in the way we live today will directly impact the future: what will the lake look like in the years 2060 and 2100?

Future 2060

A middle ground future

Projection of what happened: Not as many good decisions were made, and those made were not fully enacted, so things are not great. Many trees have died from acid rain. Due to lack of real cooperative global communication and research, invasives have destroyed many of earth's remaining trees and underwater life. The reuse of shipping containers was made due to lack of good building materials. Water is, for the most part, mostly unusable for human consumption or plant life without extensive filtering and robotic help in caring for cultivated trees and human needs. Freshwater ecology is at serious risk, so samples are cultivated and preserved in the lab with the hope of restoring the delicate balance of nature - someday. The young people in 2060 ask why did people let things get this bad back in the 2020s?

bad future 2060 design short clip.mp4
bad future clip.mp4

2100

A bleak future

Projection of what happened: Because care had not been taken of the environment in previous decades, acid rain has destroyed everything. Plants, trees and natural water cannot survive in the outside world and are now preserved indoors in underwater concrete labs. Lighting is poor to preserve energy for the organic specimens that are the only semblance of what was.

2100

A wonderful future

Projection of what happened: Care of the environment was a global effort in the previous century as people came together to learn about and protect the ecology. Simple human behaviors were modified to ensure that natural processes of life were restored for generations to come.

(in process and forthcoming.....)