Just off shore, miles past South Beach's glowing neon marquees, there are graceful and ethereal creatures, pulsing with their own natural fluorescence. These jellyfish, zoanthids, and corals, which pirouette and sway out on Miami's reefs, are the muses of art/science duo Coral Morphologic. Colin Foord and Jared McKay filmed these sea treasures in their Overtown studio, and this week, the resulting videos will be projected on select walls around Miami Beach for Art Basel.
The installation, "Artificial Reef," is the result of Christy Gast's Weird Miami tour, organized by Bas Fisher Invitational, which brought the Knight Foundation's Alberto Ibargüen to their studio. There, he saw their coral projections, and "Artificial Reef" scored funding from the generous foundation. After trying to implement a public art project like this for three years, Coral Morphologic will "encrust and colonize these buildings with colorful marine life, much like the rocks of the reef that they came from."
Foord continues, "Most people simply don't know that the cement used in
constructing Miami's buildings is largely composed of the pulverized
fossils of coral and marine life that once colonized South Florida when
it was submerged in millennia past."
From Thursday to Sunday, 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., see giant, glowing
zoanthids on the fossilized coral limestone wall of the Art Deco Welcome
Center in "Clytie"; pillow-y jellyfish
throb across the clock tower at the 401 Building on Lincoln Road in the
video "Cassiopeia"; and in "Helios," corals undulate on the north wall
of the Wolfsonian.
On Friday, there'll be an opening reception at the Art Deco Welcome
Center, where the coral screenscapes will be paired with live
performances by Sumsun and ANR. Parasian video artist Jamie Harley will
curate Coral Morpholic's films as the bands provide an ambient and aquatic
soundtrack. The reception starts at 7 p.m. and is free. Visit
