Introduction
What drew us to this piece
Mark: As has happened in the past, my colleague and friend Jessica Pressman led me to this piece. Well, she led me into the waters. With her fascination, both scholarly and personal (assuming those two parts of a person can be separated, like a mermaid from her tail), she pointed toward these enduring and multiform myths. We both shared an interest in the oceans and ecocriticism. But I had a personal interest in the object of study,
In the summer of 2014, my family and I had the pleasure of visiting the green screen lab where artist Joelllyn Rock was working on this fantastic creation. I had already participated in the work over Twitter as one of the people submitting lines through the various hashtags [hashtags] of the piece, but I had not had a chance to experience the wonders of submersion and immersion in it. Sort of like reading about the ocean but never getting to go in for a swim. And when I saw it: Θάλαττα! θάλαττα! My children loved it, too, perhaps a more perfect age for experiencing the wondrous interaction with the digital undersea creatures. They can be seen in the video documentation.
So when we had the chance to pick a work for ELO 2021, FishnetStocking came to mind. And, as before with William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope, our group dives brought us to treasures untold.