Decompression: a living laboratory in cyberspace

Decompression is a proposed cyberworld created by electronically collaging multiple stories and images of the contiguous worlds of technology, science and art. The developing Decompression centers around Ocean Landmark (1980), a collaborative art work that transformed 500 tons of an industrial coal waste product into a thriving underwater environment that is fished and feeds people. Decompression will image —for the first time— Ocean Landmark in its life-sustaining form. The technologically mediated images of this underwater oasis will be dynamic images visually related to sonograms, such as images of the fetus (a highly technologically mediated dynamic image) and side-scan sonar. As Ocean Landmark is a flourishing ecosystem, Decompression will develop into Living Laboratory, a thriving information-system in cyberspace. Modeled on virtual environments in which the user's perception and spatial position affects their experience of the space, Living Laboratory will be a dynamically changing art space with an architecture that combines technologically mediated images and virtual diverse perceptual displays. The realized Ocean Landmark, a model for ecological equilibrium in the invisible underwater world, is an interdisciplinary project that for two decades has resided in the domain of the imagination. By visualizing Ocean Landmark's invisible realm, Living Laboratory will elucidate and elaborate virtual perceptual models of different ways of experiencing information within a contemporaneous context. This Living Laboratory will grow, develop and evolve into a mature and provocative discursive community.