Squid Squad & The Deep Sea Oddity Explorer 🦑

July 23, 2022 · 5 min read

A Squiddy cluster of deep sea themed interactive cabinets! Made for the Coro's 2022 Incredible Journeys Exhibition.

Come join the Cephalopod uprising!

An art-encrusted island of curious cabinets (an arty-pelago if you like!😉) commissioned for the Coro's 2022 Incredible Journeys Exhibition (August 5th-26th).

Step up and gaze into the inky void to have your face ‘borrowed’ by the migrating Squid Squad. Move around the cabinets to explore the Kaleidoscopic Experimentation Module using our specimen petri dishes or try making your own. Further round you’ll discover a Broiling Cave of luminescent deep sea oddities hidden in the cluster. Beyond this, a rare tank of “Slow Water” will warp your reflection in mind-bending ways. Don’t miss the tiny and shy Ether Fish below, floating in a dome of trapped time!

Chris and Jennie at the Exhibition Launch Event

Kaleidoscope experiments ahoy!

Two folks trying to figure out what's going on in the Slow Water tank

Come join the Cephalopod uprising! Arty panel

Squid Squad assemble!

Experiment with Petri dishes or your own drawings using the experiment cards under the Kaleidoscopic Experimentation Module.

The Luminescent cave of deep sea oddities!

Watch your reflection warp and wibble in the Slow Water tank

Walking round the 'Arty-pelago' you see various Ernst Haeckel prints we transferred to wooden boards and a few arty experiments.

The Ether fish is so shy it can't even be photographed easily

Squid Squad A.I. Generated Art 🦑🤖🎨

The underlying structure of the Squid Squad cabinet is made from a second hand TV and cabinet.

Inspiration

With the Squid Squad I was aiming for the same gloriously hand-made asthetic of Georges Méliès and The Mighty Boosh!

The Mighty Boosh - Harrison

"I am the Moon" - The Mighty Boosh

Georges Méliès - Moon

Georges Méliès - 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA 1907

Georges Méliès - Évocation spirite (1899; Summoning the Spirits)

Squid Squad A.I. Generated Art 🦑🤖🎨

While making the Squid Squad Atoll we were granted access to a shiny new Artificial Intelligence image generator called DALL·E. It is being developed by OpenAI to create original, realistic images and art from a short text description. It “learned” to create art after analysing 800 million images.

Find out more and join the waiting list to have a go yourself here: https://labs.openai.com/

All the images below were generated with DALL·E using prompts like: