Oceanographer Jody Deming and sculptor Adrien Segal explore how science and art connect

The ocean may have something to teach us about the pandemic we’re grappling with, according to oceanographer and National Academy of Sciences member Jody Deming. Deming is a member of the Ocean Memory Project — a collaboration of scientists, artists, and others who are exploring how changes over time are encoded into ocean “memories.”     

“The ocean is filled with viruses, and most of those viruses don’t infect us — they infect marine bacteria,” said Deming. The bacteria keep a memory in their genome of viruses that have infected them, they communicate with other bacteria about what’s happening, and they keep distance from one another as a way to avoid infection. “Marine bacteria, of all things, could teach us about holding memories and learning from memories about viral infection,” she said.

Deming discussed ocean memory during a conversation hosted in June by DASER Experiments — a series of online discussions between scientists and artists who are pushing the boundaries of their fields, sponsored by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences.  

Her partner in conversation was artist Adrien Segal, who turns data on natural phenomena like tides and forest fires into sculptures in cast bronze, wood, clay, and other materials. Segal’s sculptures based on maps of wildfires are currently on exhibit at the (temporarily closed) National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.

Deming and Segal explored what inspires their work, the overlap between science and art, and future directions in their creative projects.

What drew them to their work

Following college, Deming found a job as a technician in a research lab established to support a Mars Viking mission. After designing her first experiment with light-producing enzymes, she sat alone in the lab, watching the results emerge in real time.

“It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “I felt that creative juice flowing, and I thought, wow, I need to be a scientist. And that’s been my motivation since then — to have this sense of creativity come out in the work that I can contribute.”

Segal happened upon scientific data while she was in school doing her thesis work in art, and her first piece was a sculpture based on tidal data for San Francisco bay. “I think I just got the bug for continuing to work with scientific research and data.”

That enthusiasm led her on scientific expeditions and to residencies around the world, interacting with scientists, artists, and others with expertise in a variety of areas. “Hopefully that excitement gets expressed through the work that I make, and communicates some of my ideas and the ideas of scientists to people that maybe wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to them in their normal day-to-day lives.”  

Segal noted a quality she and Deming share: “We both have a deep curiosity about the world around us and how it got to be that way. I think that’s what I’ve seen most commonplace between the artists and scientists I know that are working cross-disciplinary between those two fields.”

The pull of the Arctic

Both Deming and Segal have repeatedly visited and grounded some of their work in the Arctic. “You can’t really put your finger on what’s so fascinating about the Arctic and the ocean and the landscape, but it just pulls you in,” said Segal. “It led to a lot of work for me.”  

During a residency in Homer, Alaska, she completed a series of sculptures of sea ice, for example, and later returned to create a sculpture of the tide patterns in Homer’s bay.

Deming, who has been going on expeditions to the Arctic once or twice a year since 1987, points to the Arctic Ocean’s remoteness as inspiring her regular return: “The overwhelming sense, and the reason I keep going back, is because it teaches me humility.”

In addition, her work has intersected with the experiences of communities of indigenous people who have lived in the region for thousands of years, and who have memories that no one else can bring to the table, Deming explained. She learned that one community that stores food in deeply buried ice cellars has begun to see seepage of brine — a subject of Deming’s research — into these cellars. “We have this direct connection between my own scientific interests that have a very real impact on their food supply, so the discussion is very active there.”

Deming, who saw Segal’s sculpture of tide patterns in Homer and found it “extraordinary,” remarked on her ability to turn dry, two-dimensional data into a three-dimensional piece that captures time as well. “One of the things I love about interacting with artists is that you have a way of turning reality into a new reality that is even stronger.”

Intersections between science and art

“In the last five years, I’ve seen a lot more discussion and activity around the idea of art-science collaborations and partnerships,” said Segal, adding that her ongoing conversations with scientists informed her understanding and her work. “The interactions and discussions about how you see the world, and how I see the world, and how we respond to those things in very different ways have been really, really rich for me personally.”    

Deming also explained how concepts and approaches from art — such as the idea of positive and negative space — have shaped her work. “There is so much positive and negative space in the very issues that I study,” she said. “Having that terminology … has helped me to think differently about what I’m studying.”

Imagination, too, plays a powerful role. “I study microorganisms, and they’re invisible — you can’t see them without a powerful microscope — so imagination is a large part of my work.”

She recalled standing out on the Arctic ice in severe weather, trying to imagine the life of the tiny microorganisms in brine pockets in the ice under those conditions. “To be in that environment with them, and experience it … helped me to think about strategies they might have for combatting super-cold,” said Deming. She speculated that the microorganisms produced their own antifreeze — and then discovered that they do. “Being in the environment is what led me down those idea pathways.”

Watch the whole conversation online

Register for the July 16 DASER Experiments, featuring a conversation with environmental scientist Jennifer Jacquet and artist and writer James Prosek.