The FO-Marsh is an aquatic infrastructure that will resurrect urban salt marshes and translate ecology into art as a night-time spectacle. It is a synthetic structure made of bundles of fiber optic cables allowing it to kick-start the regrowth of a natural marsh by providing the structure for sediment accretion, refuge for living organisms, and fostering of marine food webs. Anchored to the riverbed and intermixed with salt marsh grasses, it will sway with tidal flux to create a pixilated grassland in the water that is sublimely attractive to people. Integrated into the lighting component, will be mechanisms for translating information about water quality, habitat growth, and tidal fluctuation to the public. As the development of FO-Marsh is taken from the conceptual stage into product development, a new collaboration formed between myself and a coastal marine ecologist, Keryn Bromberg Gedan. This partnership is a marriage of art and ecology, and ultimately seeks to provoke a lively conversation about the degraded nature of our waterways.



