Oil is derived from plankton, those drifting, microscopic organisms in oceans and lakes that so inspired nineteenth-century biologist Ernst Haeckel. In recognition and celebration of his work, the oil company Shell has sponsored this three-dimensional artwork by British fashion embroiderer Karen Nicol. Called Out of the Blue into the Black, it emerged from Nicol's observations of plankton at the School of Ocean Sciences at the University of Wales, Bangor.

The embroidery can be seen on 6–8 February as part of the exhibition 'Plankton in Art', which accompanies the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography meeting in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

Credit: K. NICOL/J. JONES

The exhibition, which pays homage to Haeckel's illustrations, includes the extraordinary photography of Guido Mocafico, as well as items of jewellery, glass, wood carvings and quilting. It also features a video based on the patterns of movement of zooplankton in water, produced by Japanese scientist Ai Nihongi, accompanied by music from jazz musician Akira Sakata.

A rare treat will be the evening performances of the animated documentary Proteus, directed by David Lebrun. Named for the sea-god of Greek mythology, the documentary describes the conflicting scientific and romantic visions of the sea in the nineteenth century, using some cleverly animated illustrations from the period.

Proteus pivots around the story of Haeckel and includes fast-spinning sequences of hundreds of his images, each morphing convincingly into the next. But different threads are interspersed, reflecting the contradictory times in which Haeckel lived. The industrial revolution was blasting the romantic notion of nature while at the same time revealing the extent of its wonders. The film pits The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, against the laying of the first transatlantic telegraphic cables. Broken cables hauled from the pristine deep sea beds revealed the teeming, plankton-rich life at depths previously assumed to be lifeless.

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