The New School Presents: Octopus Odyssey with Michel Droge and Dr. Beth Orcutt

The New School Presents: a talk by artist Michel Droge (Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at Bates College) and geomicrobiologist Dr. Beth Orcutt (Vice President for Research at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences) that focuses on their collaborative artistic and scientific research efforts into the science, ecology, aesthetics, and other life forms of the deep sea and ocean floor. On a recent submarine research trip into the ocean depths, their research team discovered a population of thousands of octopus gathered around a warm spring on the ocean floor, where these creatures we’ve all been trained to think of as solitary were in fact clustered together raising their young. The already innovative collaboration between artist and scientist, working at the intersection where studio art and its research-based experimental practices meets the creative work of laboratory and field-based science, found a whole new frontier to explore. Their talk will focus not only on what they’ve discovered together, and how that has shaped their respective individual and collaborative work, but also on the process of their research itself – how it has unfolded and how this important shared discovery has been a catalyst for it. Octopus Odyssey is also the official opening reception for Michel Droge’s exhibition of the same name at Sacred Profane’s gallery – an expansive and engaging collection of drawings and paintings focused on these recent deep sea explorations.