Waves are a popular element in Japanese arts and crafts, particularly in the many wood carvings from the 19. century, like the famous “Great Wave” (around 1830) by Hokusai. Here is an example, a small saucer from a random Asian food store in Germany:
In an insttruction book from 1903 Japanese artist Mori Yuzan displayed and explained hundreds of wave designs. the book can be viewed for free at archive.org:
These images are from an exhibition at the Japanese Palais in Dresden in 2023. The installation is by the Czech artist group Forman Brothers. The look is very reminiscent of Japanese art. The design here uses only the wave crests to signify water, the ground is left untouched and grey. the waves are all individual pieces, so this sea can flow everywhere, wave by wave.
Already in 1986 the well known German news-magazine Der Spiegel published this image on it’s front page. It depicts the Dome of Cologne, one of the most important cultural heritage sites of Germany, partially flooded. The visual strategies of the media have not changed much in the last 35 years!
This is the same German magazine 10 years later.
I can’t say whether the change in motiv is due to a hightened awareness of the global interconnectedness of the issue or because Germany hosted the 1. UN Climate Change Conference that year.
The New Harbour in Bremerhaven is protected by a dike. Behind the dike lie the German Maritime Museum, the Klimahaus and further behind the city’s center. Right behind the dike stands a sculpture to commemorate the danger of storm surges. Copper rings on the pole of the sculpture show the maximum water levels of past storm surges (1717, 1825, 1906, 1936, 1962, 1973). On the top is a copper model of the Bremen Hanseatic Cog over a globe that can be rotated in the wind. The model was created by the Bremerhaven sculptor Gerhard Olbrich in 1975 and can be seen from both sides of the dike.
Mural in Bremen Neustadt advertising the local beer company Beck’s. The building and the brewery are directly adjacent to a dike that is in urgent need of renovation and elevation.
A building at Hongkongstraße in Hamburg’s harbour district adorned with japanese style waves.
Not a mural but a floor design at the new harbour in Bremerhaven. Large white fish are painted across the cement floor of a public space called Wily-Brandt-Platz, that has been redesigned in 2013.
The Alexander Romance is an account of the life and exploits of Alexander the Great. Although constructed around a historical core, the romance is largely fictional. It was widely copied and translated, accruing various legends and fantastical elements at different stages. The original version was composed in Ancient Greek some time before 338 CE, when a Latin translation was made, although the exact date is unknown. (from Wikipedia)
One of those tales is about a deep sea dive Alexander undertook:
” In the Problemata, a text contentiously credited to Aristotle, the philosopher tells how his student Alexander the Great descends to the depths of the sea in “a very fine barrel made entirely of white glass”, as a later poet would put it. The reasons for this descent differ across time. For some, it was to scout submarine defenses surrounding the city of Tyre during its siege. Others depict the Macedonian king met with a cruel vision of the great chain of being, stating, upon resurfacing, that “the world is damned and lost. The large and powerful fish devour the small fry”.
In one particularly elaborate version, Alexander submerges with companions — a dog, cat, and cock — entrusting his life to a mistress who holds the cord used to retrieve the bathysphere. However, during his dive, she is seduced by a lover and persuaded to elope, dropping the chains that anchor Alexander and his animal companions to their boat. Through a gruesome utility, the pets help him survive: the cock keeps track of time in the lightless fathoms, the cat serves as a rebreather to purify the vessel’s atmosphere, and the poor hound’s body becomes a kind of airbag, propelling Alexander back to the sea’s surface.” (from Public Domain Review)
When the story was told to me by Tobias Bulang, he explained that to medieval believe, the ocean does not keep dead bodies inside. Thus Alexander’s diving bell would rise back to the surface because the ocean emited the animal’s corpse. The fact that drowned corpses tend to float on the surface of the water instead of sinking to the ground gives plausible cause for this believe. Still I would be interested to understand, what people then believed to be the cause for this.
The image of Alexandre the Great below the sea became quite popular in the visual arts of the 14. and the following centuries. You can see many more creative and vivid illustrations here.
Thanks to Tobias Bulang for the lead.
I found this image on facebook. It’s from the twitter account of @bothcoasts and was posted on October 1st 2022. It was taken in Naples, Florida, USA.
Thanks to Princess Brown-Burkert for the lead.
Interestingly enough a year later these images were taken in Bremen, Northern Germany:
Thanks to Jessica Fritz for the lead.
“Asunder is an art project that responds to a growing interest in the application of AI to critical environmental challenges. […] It’s a fictional ‘environmental manager’ that proposes and simulates future alterations to the planet to keep it safely within planetary boundaries, with what are often completely unacceptable or absurd results. In doing so, Asunder questions assumptions of computational neutrality, our increasingly desperate reach for techno-solutionist fixes to planetary challenges, and the broader ideological framing of the environment as a system.” (from the artists’s website)
Found in Tactical Tech’s exhibition.
Climate adaptation for coastal cities will require altered relationships to the sea and the marine ecosystem. future coastal city communities will live closer to and closer with the sea and it’s inhabitants. This will most likely require modifications of both, urban and marine landscape and structure. Engineering will not stop above sea level. The question is, how much alteration and optimization is desireable beyond our sheer technical capacity. This collaborative AI-project ask just this question. Check out the project’s web page: YANTO
Found in Tactical Tech’s exhibition.
In the Donald Duck story “Zio Paperone e la deriva dei monumenti“ by Italian comic artists Giorgio Pezzin and Giorgio Cavazzano, Uncle Scrooge together with Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie save the historic buildings of Venice from rising floods.
The story first appeared as early as 1977 and has all the ingredients of our current debates about the protection of cultural heritage from climate change. Uncle Scrooge suggests to put the historic buildings on large floating pillows that would rise with the flood and lower again when the waters receed. The story was published in over a dozen countries, the german version alone saw 6 reprints until 2013.
The following images are from a German edition:
Thanks to Tobias Bulang and Janet Grau for the lead and their kid’s comic book.