Art&Science Collaboration: Movie "Offshore" created with TRR181 inspiration by Artist Radoš Vujaklija

Art&Science project: Offshore. A short science-fiction video about the human-ocean coexistence in the far future.

Report by Radoš Vujaklija:

"In early 2023, I began imagining a sci-fi world that I would eventually make a film about, set on Earth in the distant future. In this world, resources are scarce, life doesn't happen easily, and the descendants of humans are among the few surviving complex organisms. They have reconstructed their own DNA sequences multiple times and integrated synthetic organs and mechanical parts.

In September 2023, I met with Jennifer Fandrich to discuss the possibility of developing some aspects of this fictional world through an exchange with researchers and professors involved in the TRR181 project. We set a plan: I would leave the creatures and characters aside and discuss the meteorological possibilities of this world with the researchers.

What followed was a period of six months during which I conducted individual interviews with the scientists that had replied to my open invitation. In the first round of interviews, I spoke with Moritz Epke, Prof. Maren Walter, Quan Liu (刘权), Venkata Siva Subrahmanyam Kattamuri and Prof. Jens Rademacher.

An early eye-opening experience was my interview with Prof. Maren Walter, during which I realized that I had no excuse not to include subaquatic existence along with life on land—the people of the future will surely be able to move freely through both the ocean and the atmosphere.

It was striking to see that physicists and mathematicians don’t treat the oceans and the atmosphere as two separate worlds (as we, mere mortals, do). This is largely because, in terms of physics, both are fluids, and thus the same equations apply in most cases.

Another turning point was noticing that ocean eddies have become a hot topic in this field of research in recent years. Technology has evolved enough to measure meso- and submesoscale phenomena, and the influence of eddies on the ocean and the atmosphere has been underestimated in scientific circles in previous centuries.

In the next round of interviews, which I conducted with Nils Brüggemann, Prof. Stephan Juricke, and Evridiki Chrysagi, I chose to focus on the topic of eddies. It is established that eddies can influence the amount of oxygen in the water, the amount of salt, the biomass and the weather in the atmosphere.

Another active research topic was the influence of physical obstacles, such as small islands, on the creation of eddies. Eddies are formed by turbulence in the flow of the fluid, so it is logical that a physical obstacle disrupting the flow will cause the so-called shedding of new eddies.

At this point, I was ready to perform the creative gesture within my fictional world: What if the inhabitants of this world tried to make the ocean waters and the atmosphere work in their favor by strategically placing large mesoscale physical obstacles and thus controlling the formation of eddies and all the effects that eddies can cause?

I decided to sketch out a story in which the inhabitants of the future world attempt to do exactly that, and, having inherited the foolishness of their ancestors, their greed becomes their doom.

I made a video that I showed in an exhibition at an offspace called Zollo, in Hammerbrook, Hamburg. The technique I used to organize the content of the video is called “carding” and it is typically used by scriptwriters. To put it most simply, you lay out pieces of your story and ideas in cards and then you try reordering them in different sequences until you get a senseful outline of what you want to tell.

This video is now uploaded here and presents the outlines of the concept, the story, and tries to convey the taste of the atmosphere that my future films set in this world will have. The exhibition was accompanied by a music playlist that served as a soundtrack, but since I have no rights to those tracks, the video shown here is silent.

Besides the ideas shown in the video, I have brainstormed various other ideas with the scientists, which I have noted down and might use for other stories told within this world. I thank everyone wholeheartedly for this unique experience."