Our newest installation, a jellyfish. Designed by Matt Tarpley and team at Thinc Design of New York, the jellyfish is a purpose-built environment for Drop in the Ocean, a VR experience that made its world debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in April and next opens at the California Academy of Sciences.
Co-produced by Vision3 and Conservation International, Drop in the Ocean is an interactive, social virtual-reality experience that immerses you deep in the water — and directly into the plastic pollution crisis plaguing the world’s oceans.
The seven-minute-long experience is built from the photo archive of Academy Award-winning micro-photographer Peter Parks. When you step into the jellyfish and slip on the VR goggles, you become a passenger atop a virtual jellyfish journeying through the ocean depths. Guided by the narration of explorers Philippe and Ashlan Cousteau and enveloped in the music of Gold Panda, the experience is so immersive and vivid that you’ll find yourself reaching out to touch sea creatures as they swim by, ducking to dodge plastic flotsam, or perhaps peering cautiously over the edge of your jellyfish host, just as you might nervously look down from the roof of a tall building, into the seemingly infinite depth of the ocean.
Transformit’s custom fabrication, with an aluminum frame, internal LED lighting, and a stretch-fabric face with custom graphics enabled Thinc’s design, with all its fluid-like curves and glowing colors, to come to life as a wonder of the sea. Furthermore, to facilitate Drop in the Ocean’s installation as a traveling exhibit, the build of our fabric structure can be readily assembled and disassembled on site.
Dive in. Explore Drop in the Ocean: https://www.conservation.org/drop
Installation Design: Thinc Design
Jellyfish Fabrication: Transformit
Drop in the Ocean Co-producers: Conservation International and Vision3