Underwater is an artwork that reimagines the beauty of an inexistent marine community with the help of artificial intelligence based on the photographs of the collected marine samples from waters in Hong Kong by marine scientists from The Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS).
This artwork draws its inspiration from a scientific project focus on marine biodiversity conducted by SWIMS. MarineGEO scientists at SWIMS study how various water conditions impact the marine ecosystem by using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS). The structures with stacks of plates are submerged in waters at different locations in Hong Kong and then collected after a designated period of time. The scientists then retrieve and disassemble the ARMS to analyze the organisms that have taken up the residence in ARMS. What’s truly astonishing is that sometimes undocumented species could be revealed in the structures. Therefore here we raise a question: How many unseen species are there on our planet that might be extinct before we know they exist?