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Mutated Video Sequences
Fine Art Prints
Live Performances
A Word on Using This Site's Content
'visual immersions' is the other half of okeanos - a name to represent its purely artistic output, if you will.
Underwater video distinguishes itself by capturing the beauty of nature in unusual environments with a steady hand and sharp focus and much patience. immersions, on the other hand, use underwater video as a clay out of which to shape 'hyper-natural' experiences with high-tech tools: mating squid and flowing kelp can lend their shapes and motions to synchopated strobing live collages that respond to music in a club full of ecstatic dancers. Everyone is swimming in light whose sources are the sea. These are the okeanos visual immersions.
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Mutated video are the intersection between the marine environment and the electronic arts - all set to music. In some pieces, very little is done to modify my natural subjects while in others, subjects lend little more than their shape and motion to the final production. These are my favorite immersions!
Kaliedosquid uses the exact same video and music as Smokin' Japanesese Squid but has otherwise been composited using different effects and treatments. I like the fact that the original marine subject is still (somewhat) recognizable beneath everything else.
Smokin' Japanese Squid: This is one of my favorite mutations. It uses some Monterey squid video, slowed down and heavily processed through AfterEffects to the point that the subject is hardly recognizable. This work tweaks many underwater video purists..
The star of Fish Blender is a huge school of salima - a herring-like fish which I taped in the Galapagos in 1998. These fish swarm together in uncountable numbers for protection from predators during the day. They are so cohesive that you can swim into the middle of the school and it simply parts and reforms around you.
Blue and Gold makes use of content taped at the Channel Islands in southern California during the peak of the kelp growing season. This lush growth creates antedeluvian forests through which marine life and divers fly, illuminated by shafts of light diffracted through the thick canopy covering the surface.
Moon Dance was actually the first full-length set-to-music piece I did using MotionMath. It's perhaps still the most complex piece I've created in terms of composition and has several distinct "acts". It's almost 8 minutes took forever to render in 1998 on a 400Mhz Pentium II processor.
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okeanos has produced a number of fine art prints based on underwater imagery. I start with video still frames and then get to work on them using Photoshop. They are in fact the original 'immersion' forms - work I did before desktop tools were good enough to let me author the mutated video sequences. If you are interested in ordering a fine are print for yourself please contact okeanos for pricing.
Mating Squid: This is a print to which I have done almost nothing - the beautiful irridescent sheen of the squid is natural and if anything, is only a pale reflection of the actual colors of these amazing creatures. The center of the composition is a mating pair - male grappling with female. In the background are egg cases, already fertilized and anchored in the sand.
Pastel Moon: Moon Jellyfish were frequenty to be found at the surface of the ocean after a late-night squid dive in Monterey. They are practically without any color - just shades of grey - so applying a tint to them as one tints a black & white photo seemed only natural.
Paisley Squid: This background of this image was worked over using a drawing tablet and stylus to give it it's distinctive look. Sometimes it feels like the squid is in orbit around the earth - fitting for such an alien looking critter.
Perfect Chrysaora: Monterey Bay is often overrun with Chrysaora jellies and they appropriately form the centerpice of the Jellies exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I've made a number of prints using them at the subject, but there's something 'perfect' about this one to me - the golden color of the medusa against the posterized green-blue background is just so appealing.
Cteno Ctriptych: The backside of San Clemente in the Channel Islands is frequently washed by open ocean currents carrying a variety of pelagic zooplankton - including very large ctenophores or comb jellies. This print is based on three simple treatments of a particularly large ctenophore - almost 8 inches in length - that passed me by on a safety stop. The 'c' in 'ctenophore is slient, by the way.
Rainbow Chrysaora: This Chrysaora has a almost sandblasted look to it and the colors are amp'ed to make them extra vibrant.
Shark Dance 1: One of a series of prints based upon Hammerhead sharks videoed at Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica.
Lunar Series: Sort of a contact sheet showing different treatments applied to the same Moon Jelly I used to create "Pastel Moon". This is one of the the larger prints I've created.
Blue Washed Sharks: I dunno, this treatment - which included the application of an exaggerated halftone dot patter to the sharks - just made me think of jeans.
CranOrange Sharks: Another Hammerhead shark composition, the name of which seems rather obvious.
Black Light Tealia: Large Tealia - formerly Urticina - anemones dot the underwater landscape of Monterey Bay and the Carmel Canyon. The most common species has a white body and feeding tentacles with scarlet and brown striped central disks. Simple manipulations in Photoshop yeilded a image which appears to be illuminated by blacklight. This print is magnficient when viewed under strong white illumination revealing wonderful dark purple and red shading.
Neon Chrysaora: The colors used here all remind me of tones that one might find in neon signage. I've been considering getting this image reproduced using true fluoroescent inks to create a black-light reactive poster. A throwback to the Sixties...
Painted Jack: Large schools of Jacks, like this Horse-Eyed Jack from Cocos Island, can be found throughout the Pacific. Intense fishing has greatly reduced their numbers, however, and the frequency with which divers now encounter 'endless shoals'. This image was created by 'painting' over the Jack's blue body with yet another schooling fish - the much smaller herring-like Salima, recorded in the Galapagos.
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Live Performances
okeanos frequently does live VJ performances in support of the San Francisco underground dance and clubbing scene. We use state of the art software-based performance tools and professional projection and video mixing equipment. If you are interested in seeing a demo of our work, retaining out services or renting equipment, please contact okeanos directly.