Catch our new audiovisual piece 2317 projection-mapped onto the facade of the Faena Forum during Miami Art Week 2017, as part of the ‘Ediacaran Mind’ exhibition. 2317 is visible nightly starting at sundown & shows Monday, December 4th – Saturday, December 9th.
We are psyched to share that Colin provided the spoken word intro to the song ‘Coral Lords’ from Animal Collective member Avey Tare‘s beautiful new album, Eucalyptus. The passage reads:
“Corals were the first timekeepers of Planet Earth. For more than half a billion years, their internal clocks have been synchronized with the sun and the moon. However, it would take life several hundred million years of further evolution before finally crawling out of from beneath the liquid lens of the ocean and into the open air where it would develop the consciousness necessary to ask the question, then the intelligence needed to invent the technology to empirically measure its objective reality. Thus, the purpose of life is to quantify the nature of the cosmos itself. The development of symbiosis between coral and humankind appears as a harbinger for the final stages of life on earth. Our ouroboros is nearly complete.”
Coral Morphologic makes a cameo in the new Arcade Fire music video, ‘Signs of Life.’ The vid follows two paranormal investigators through the weird world(s) of South Florida.
On February 24th 2017, Coral Morphologic presents Coral Orgy, a collaborative site specific performance with Animal Collective at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center on Miami Beach. Coral Orgy is an audiovisual meditation on the secrets behind the sexual reproduction of corals, and an invocation towards the human quest of unlocking them. Animal Collective will perform an hour of new music inspired by the reefs while Coral Morphologic projects a cosmic world of fluorescent coral inside the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center performance using its twelve 4k projectors to map all five of Gehry’s sails. Before the performance, Coral Morphologic films will play outside on the 7,000 square foot projection wall in SoundScape Park.
Tickets on sale Tuesday, February 7th via https://coralorgy.frontgatetickets.com
Through this event, Coral Morphologic and Animal Collective aim to highlight the groundbreaking scientific work done on coral reproduction by the non-profits Coral Restoration Foundation (USA), SECORE (GER), and Project Coral (UK).
We are psyched to make an appearance in a new episode of Hamilton Morris’ Viceland TV show, Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia. Colin & Hamilton dive on Miami’s Cosmic Reef in search of a marine sponge known to contain psychedelic compounds. Watch via Viceland.
We are psyched to share Rarities, an album of 10 soundtracks compiling the music from our early short films and Natural History outtakes. Rarities was written, produced, and mixed by Coral Morphologic and mastered by Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios, Asheville NC. The album features CM photography / design and is available in a very-limited 12″ x 12″ ‘Screen Print Edition‘ depicting Ernst Haeckel’s ‘Brain Stone’ illustration in fluorescent inks. The 5 prints were hand-screened by Colin on artist Robert Rauschenberg’s Captiva Island printing press during the ‘Rising Waters II’ residency. Stream Rarities via Spotify and pick up the album in digital and print editions @ https://coralmorphologic.bandcamp.com/album/rarities
We are pleased to share the release of a series of apparel recycled from post-consumer plastic bottles, in collaboration with our friends at Waterlust. The ‘Cosmic Coral’ line features Coral Morphologic zoanthid, man o war, and flower anemone prints, and are now available to purchase from the Waterlust online shop. The leggings are 86% RPET (recycled polyester), 14% lycra, giving 10 post-consumer plastic bottles a positive future. Additionally, they are printed using dye-sublimation, an environmentally friendly process which uses no water and minimizes waste. 10% of profits go toward our efforts to research and document Miami’s imperiled coral reefs.
Robert Rauschenberg’s Fish House on Captiva Island, Florida.
Colin recently took part in a 15-day residency at the former home and studio of artist Robert Rauschenberg on Captiva Island, Florida. The residency was the second edition of the ‘Rising Waters Confab’, which aims to “spark new thinking and to influence civic will toward finding and spreading solutions to the rising waters of climate change. This movement is a collective effort guided by a diverse array of artists and writers in a spirit of collaboration with scientists, activists, advocates, philanthropists, and island dwellers.”
Colin spent his time on Captiva screen printing a collection of new work on Rauschenberg’s press, taking photographs of the island’s breathtaking views overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, and working with artists, scientists, architects, and writers on interdisciplinary approaches to tackling climate change. Read the residencies’ blog here.
It’s a treat to share Flower Garden Banks, an Animal Collective x Coral Morphologic collaboration featuring “Michael, Remember (Jam May 12, 2015)”, the first warm-up jam for Animal Collective upon getting together to practice for the first time in a year and a half. It features Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist, and was recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC. The accompanying underwater video was recorded in July 2014 within the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary over two nights by Colin, with additional camera and lighting by Deakin and Geologist of Animal Collective. The raw jam and video were later shared, and the resulting video was edited by Jared.
The Flower Garden Banks are located about 100 miles offshore Galveston, Texas in the Gulf of Mexico and are the northernmost coral reef formations in the continental United States. The reef begins at about 60’ deep and is characterized by massive brain coral heads and a lack of branching or soft corals. The corals were filmed with special blue wavelength lights and filters that capture the natural fluorescence of the colonies. While the evolutionary purpose that this fluorescence serves corals is still not fully understood, the directed application of the corals’ fluorescent proteins by geneticists was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 by serving to accelerate (and literally illuminate) the field of genetics and biochemistry.
Today we release an album we’ve been compiling for years – Flannel Beach: The Doom Years, a mixtape featuring South Floridian bands spanning the years of 2004-2012. The album is available in digital, 12″ vinyl, and cassette editions via our online store & IRL @ Gramps Friday, September the 25th. Coral City & Natural History Redux are screening before Rick Guerre goes live, followed by a special Guy Harvey reunion set. Read more about Flannel Beach here via the Miami New Times and here via The Creators Project. Thank You to the musicians of Flannel Beach, Sound Nutrition, who co-produced the LP, Jorge Gonzalez Graupera, who mastered it, and Brian Butler, the artist behind the swampy album artwork.
We are proud to have filmed the corals of the Miami Coral Rescue Mission for a new BBC three-episode television series on the Atlantic Ocean titled Atlantic: The Wildest Ocean on Earth. Watch the Coral Morphologic-shot coral fluorescence sequence above, which features in the series’ third episode, ‘From Heaven to Hell’, airing August 13th on BBC Two in the UK.
A thorny mud crab (Micropanope urinator) scuttles along the face of a Fire Coral (Millepora alcicornis) encrusted barnacle range.
During the production of Natural History Redux we naturally had several outtakes… enjoy!
We’re psyched to share a soundtrack of ours (‘Strand’) is part of Other Electricities‘ new “call and response” LP, where Emile Milgrim and T. Wheeler Castillo’s Floridian field recordings are included in original and remixed forms. Stream Archival Feedback via Spotify and pick up the album in digital and vinyl / deluxe editions @ https://other-electricities.bandcamp.com/album/archival-feedback
Last month, our film Natural History Redux screened at the Imagine Science Film Festival held at New York University’s campus in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is located along the Arabian/ Persian Gulf as one of the coastal Emirates in the United Arab Emirates. Colin was asked to speak on a panel regarding the future of global water resources and the importance that art/ science has to play in bringing these issues into public awareness. However, he also had the opportunity to explore the unique marine habitat in the area.
We are very psyched to share Coral City, a half-hour documentary accompanying the Coral Morphologic cover story in last August’s VICE Magazine. The movie, directed by John McSwain and shot by Jake Burghart of VICE Media, documents our efforts to highlight the urban corals of Miami as resilient pioneers adapting to a rapidly changing world.
We’re grateful to present the original film score for Natural History Redux, collecting the original versions of NHR‘s 23 short film soundtracks. The NHR score was written, produced, and mixed by Coral Morphologic (with the exception of ‘Man O War’ – written, produced, and mixed by Geologist) and mastered by Adam McDaniel at Drop of Sun Studios, Asheville NC. The album is available in a 18″ x 24″ ‘Collage Poster Edition‘ featuring a collage by David Scott Myers (Red Wizard Collage), with design and photography by CM. Stream the original film score for Natural History Redux via Spotify and pick up the album in digital and print editions @ https://coralmorphologic.bandcamp.com/album/natural-history-redux-original-film-score
A fluorescence photograph of the hybrid fused staghorn coral.
It was the discovery of a hybrid fused staghorn coral living on a granite boulder beneath the shadows of a luxury condo that initially sparked our interest in the resilient corals that are taking advantage of Miami’s underwater infrastructure. Colin first presented this coral to the public for TEDxMIA in 2011 in a talk titled ‘A Hybrid Future – The Corals of Miami’. But with the Army Corps’ Deep Dredge of Government Cut happening just a stones throw from where this coral lives, we have been particularly concerned about the health of this coral. Not only are Miami’s corals being inundated with excessive dredge silt, they’re also dealing with the same water conditions that have induced an alarming percentage of corals to bleach across South Florida’s reefs.
A morphing loop of ‘The Humongous Fungus Among Us Issue’ photographed under daylight, blacklight, and fluorescence filter.
Be sure to pick up a copy of the August, 2014 offering from VICE Magazine, ‘The Humongous Fungus Among Us Issue’, which features a special blacklight-reactive cover depicting Zoanthus polyps cloned and photographed in the Coral Morphologic lab. The issue’s contents are also available online, including the cover story, ‘Miami Is Drowning‘, by John McSwain.
A Coral Reef City vinyl-wrapped parking booth at PortMiami, 2014. Photo: Gesi Schilling.
Earlier this year we teamed with artist and friend Bhakti Baxter to wrap 18 parking booths at PortMiami with colorful vinyl, vividly depicting portraits of Miami’s now-iconic soft corals, Zoanthids. Coral Reef City was commissioned by Miami-Dade Art in Public Places and will remain at the port through 2024, welcoming 4 million visitors annually.
Update 2015: We are honored to announce that the project was awarded among the best public art projects in the nation by Americans for the Arts as part of their Public Art 2014 Year in Review.
Coral Morphologic is proud to announce the digital release of the remixed and remastered Natural History Redux today, March 6, 2014. NHR compiles our original Natural History series of videos (that were previous only available online individually in 720p) into a digital 1080p collector’s edition. NHR sees these 23 films hypnotically datamoshed together into a half-hour odyssey of the sea. Watch the official film free above, @ https://vimeo.com/showcase/naturalhistoryredux, or purchase the film @ coralmorphologic.bigcartel.com/product/natural-history-redux-digital-hd-film
The release of Natural History Redux represents the closing of the early chapters of Coral Morphologic. The ‘Natural History’ series represents our early ‘demos’, as the acquisition of the landmark Canon 5D Mark II in 2009 had suddenly made high-definition macro videography an affordable prospect for us. At that time we were still based out of our original home-based lab, where we made do with miniaturized aquarium sets that we hand-crafted in DIY spirit, challenging ourselves to make living portraits of our local invertebrate marine life. Colin did the filming, and J.D. composed original soundtracks (except ‘Man O War’ which was scored by Animal Collective’s Geologist) to accompany each film. We charged ourselves to film and release a new portrait every week on this blog, which for the most part we delivered under self-imposed Monday morning deadlines. After filming ‘Man O War’ we found ourselves in a position where we felt constrained by our home-based lab, and took the gamble to move into a dedicated facility where we could expand our vision. It would be another two years before we had the time or resources to film anything new (the new Lab was considerably more expensive to set up and operate). 3 years later, we are pleased to offer a remixed and remastered compilation of these films as an audio-visual album. Enjoy!
We are psyched to share that our short film Fungia Food was included in the ‘Nature’ episode of Adult Swim‘s show Off The Air. Check out the episode above.
We are psyched to debut the Coral Morphologic + Dylan Romer-directed video for Dim Past‘s ‘Spectre In Wire’, an aquatic cut off the Black Dolphin EP. Utilizing Google Glass and GoPro devices, we take a trip down the Miami River, through Government Cut, and out to the sea, our destination. There we dive in and illuminate the Corals of Miami, keepers of a magical yet ephemeral realm. Dylan Romer’s reality-augmenting ‘Time Piles’ application treats the exploration, holding the experience together like a glue until we resurface.
The video originally premiered at the Collabo Show via our projection-sculpture ‘Version Key #2’, and online via Dazed Digital.
We are honored to be featured in the most recent issue of the UM Magazine and have one of our photos featuring a menagerie of our colorful Ricordea florida color morphs grace the cover. The article highlights the contributions of University of Miami alumni (’04) and Coral Morphologic co-founder Colin Foord to the body of science and public understanding of coral reef organisms through site-specific and multi-media artworks. The aquacultural legacy continues with our mentorship of University of Miami marine science students who get hands on experience growing corals within our Overtown laboratory.
Tombstone (close up).
From April 13 – May 4 we will have Tombstone, our new installation, on exhibition at Swampspace in the Design District of Miami. The piece consists of a projection of Colpophyllia natans thrown onto a keystone screen of its own fossilized ancestors, set upon concrete blocks, they themselves comprised of calcium derived from ancient Floridian reefs.
We are proud to present (in collaboration with O, Miami Poetry Festival) an original 5-Poem split 7″ featuring 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith and L.A. Times Book Prize-finalist Gabrielle Calvocoressi. A limited edition of 200 records were pressed, with each cover hand-painted as an original multiple by Miami artist Nicolas Lobo.
On Thursday, September 20th, at 8:30 p.m., we’ll unveil the record at Lester’s in Wynwood. Copies will be available for sale for $15. The record is also available to buy via the Coral Morphologic store.
Coral Morphologic is featured in the February 2012 edition of Ocean Drive Magazine.
We are proud and humbled to have the opportunity to release the final four recordings from the beloved and now-defunct Miami band Beings. The Social Creep EP is a 4-song, limited-edition run of 100 copies in glow-in-the-dark vinyl with sleeve art by the band, screen-printed in glow-in-the-dark ink by Iron Forge Press. We have rubber stamped our corallimorph logo onto both sides of the center-sticker by hand and numbered the a-side, both in silver ink.
Lester’s in Miami is graciously hosting the listening/ release party this Friday, December 9th as well as Laser Wolf in Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday, the 10th. We will have the record for sale for $15 at the parties. The remaining copies will be available at the Coral Morphologic store.
Check out the video from Colin’s TEDx talk, where he highlights Miami’s urban corals – specifically a rare hybrid “super” coral that may help in future rehabilitation of Florida’s fragile reefs.
We are thrilled to share that Colin will be counted as a speaker at the TEDxMIA 2011 annual conference Between The Lines, September 13th at the New World Center on Miami Beach. He will expound the adaptational prowess of an extremely rare “hybrid” Caribbean stony coral (Acropora prolifera) he discovered while exploring the waters of Biscayne Bay and Government Cut. Click here to read an interview with Colin on the meaning of this find and what it predicts for the future of Florida’s coral reefs.
From August 19 – September 4 we will exhibit public projections in the city center of Cairns, Australia as part of Cairns Festival 2011. Under the direction of Morphologic collaborator Michael F. McPeake, Underwater Worlds celebrates Cairns’ intimate relationship with the coral reef. Showing alongside our films is Australia’s seminal underwater documentary Invisible Wonders of the Great Barrier Reef, shot in 1961 by Noel and Kitty Monkman off the coast of Cairns.
