A newly scored and recolored reel from the Meditation Ocean Constellation’s work with Aquarius Reef Base.
Roger Garcia, Dive Producer, Diver
Sarah Howard, Second Camera, Diver
Joshua Farmer, Diver
Dean Hubenig, Diver
Hope Ginsburg, Director, Editor
Matt Flowers, Director of Photography, First Camera
Joshua Quarles, Composer, Sound Editor
Support provided by:
Jim McNeal, The Dive Shop Richmond
Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts
VCU Department of Kinetic Imaging
Posted: 5/9/2025
In February, M.O. Artist/Director Hope Ginsburg traveled to the Florida Keys to record interviews with five Aquarius Reef Base aquanauts for M.O. Aquarius Reef Base, a new experimental documentary video by the Meditation Ocean Constellation. The work in progress reveals the never-before-told history of Aquarius Reef Base, the world’s only underwater lab and habitat for saturation diving. M.O. Aquarius Reef Base focuses on human and more-than-human coexistence on the seabed and what it can teach us about awe and climate action. The aquanauts who have spent weeks living aboard Aquarius appear on its exterior amid the teeming wildlife that has made the nearly forty-year-old vessel a part of the reef. The audio pairs an original score with the divers’ reflections on their experiences and firsthand knowledge of our changing ocean.
Thank you to Roger Garcia (pictured), Dean Hubenig, Thomas Potts, Otto Rutten, and Henry Stark for fascinating conversations; to Joshua Quarles for sound consulting; to Matt Flowers for the image; and to VCUarts and the Department of Kinetic Imaging for travel support and equipment.
Posted: 3/15/25
Posted: 8/5/2024
Work on the new “M.O. Aquarius Reef” is underway. In May, a small team from the Meditation Ocean Constellation, including Matt Flowers, Hope Ginsburg, Sarah Howard, and Joshua Quarles, traveled to Aquarius Reef Base in the Florida Keys for a two-day dive and video shoot to document the world’s only underwater lab and habitat. Aquarius sits below sixty feet of water, approximately five and a half miles from the coast of Islamorada, Florida, beside Conch Reef. If you'd like to follow the project, find us on Instagram at meditation_ocean.
Posted: 7/15/2024
This newly-released short interview with Meditation Oean Constellation Artist/Director Hope Ginsburg was recorded during the making of Meditation Ocean at the Wexner Center for the Arts in November 2022, and went live at the end of June 2024.
Posted: 7/15/2024
"While Meditation Ocean left the Wex in July 2023, a recent Climate Impact Report on the exhibition for the collective Artists Commit brought to light the resources saved and emissions reduced through sustainability strategies between the artists’ and the Wex. These include elements like a longer rotation period for the installation, and the seating within the space. With sustainability and environmental connection in mind, we revisit the Meditation Ocean Constellation, learning more about biological interconnectedness not just through Meditation Ocean, but through Sara Smith’s project Inside the Breath: INT (In Network Time) and Gina Siepel’s work To Understand a Tree. Together, they consider the intersections of their work and the breathing practices that weave them together. They discuss what it means to be present, to sit in awareness of an environment and its ties to human history, and to understand one’s exchanges with the natural world."
Posted: 2/26/2024
A Climate Impact Report for "Mediation Ocean" at the Wexner Center for the Arts is now live on the Artists Commit website. The report was co-authored by curator/producer Jennifer Lange and artist/director Hope Ginsburg of the Meditation Ocean Constellation, with the mentorship of artist and Artists Commit mentor Jessica Gath.
Posted 1/20/24
Artist/director Hope Ginsburg presents Meditation Ocean and gives context for the project in this VCUarts Lecture Series talk on October 3, 2023, at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, VA.
Posted: 12/9/2023
Between Life and Land: Crisis
Kimball Art Center
Park City, Utah
July 21, 2023 – October 29, 2023
"In the face of our global climate crisis and tensions around the exploitation or pollution of our planet’s precious resources, the artists in the third chapter of Between Life and Land are compelled to respond to pressing environmental issues." —Nancy Stoaks, Curator
Artists: Ackroyd & Harvey, Lani Asunción, Tiana Birrell, Lily Brooks, Desert ArtLAB, John Grade, Beth Krensky, Meditation Ocean Constellation, Postcommodity, Gabriela Salazar, and Wendy Wischer.
Meditation Ocean Constellation, Meditation Reels from M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow, 2023, Three-channel video with five guided meditations. Excerpted here is "Meditation for Divers" by Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles.
Posted: 8/13/2023
Joshua Quarles, Composer and Sound Recordist for the Meditation Ocean Constellation, has made his score for "M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow" available for free listening/downloading. Find the album at his Bandcamp page, link above.
Posted: 8/2/2023
Posted 5/29/2023
Meditation Ocean (gallery guide)
Wexner Center for the Arts, 2023
Contents:
An Introduction by Jennifer Lange
Groundedness Through Floating by Melody Jue
We Care About It (for Hope Ginsburg) by Anaïs Duplan
M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow Site Statement by Hope Ginsburg
Constellation and Sustainability: New Ways of Working by Jennifer Lange
Designed by Kendall Markley and Nisiqi
Edited by Julian Myers-Szupinska and Ryan Shafer
Printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper derived from rapidly renewable sources, chlorine-free. Electricity used in paper manufacturing is 100% matched with renewable energy credits from wind power projects. Printed with soy-based ink. Self-cover.
Posted: 5/27/2023
Annie Dell'Aria
Deep Breathing
May 2023
"Some critics of contemporary art map immersive video and social practice onto opposite ends of a spectrum of viewer activation—one passive and spectacular, the other participatory and de-skilled. M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow challenges such schemata by folding high production values and cinematic enchantment into an expansive educational and participatory project that contemplates urgent crises through the lens of what might be called a pneumatic politics."
Posted: 5/26/2023
"For this episode of On Pause, we explore underwater meditations and land-based actions in the Meditation Ocean exhibit. At its heart is M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow (2023) an immersive video installation that invites visitors to breathe with ocean wildlife and meditating scuba divers."
Posted: 5/26/2023
Thought-provoking Wexner Center exhibits explore human interaction with the environment
April 16, 2023
"This beautiful, interactive exhibit — offering land-locked central Ohioans a special glimpse of ocean life — is part of the larger “Meditation Ocean” exhibit and was conceived and directed by Richmond, Va., artist Hope Ginsburg. It is the culmination of her two-year artist residency and an even longer relationship with the Wexner Center."
Posted: 4/25/2023
"Join artists Hope Ginsburg, Cadine Navarro, and Anaïs Duplan for this year's Director's Dialogue—the culmination of our new meditation series, Breathe. For the monthlong series Breathe, programmed in conjunction with the exhibition Meditation Ocean, our featured artists each led two meditation sessions connecting breath, body, environment, and creativity. The artists will gather in our Film/Video Theater to reflect on the series and the ways meditation and breathing techniques influence their respective artistic practices and connect them to the earth. The conversation is moderated by Dora Kamau, a meditation artist and teacher for the Headspace app."
Posted: 4/20/2023
March 30, 2023
M.O. artist/director Hope Ginsburg gives an artist talk sponsored by the OSU Humanities Institute Living Art Eco Lab Working Group (2-3 pm) followed by a Visioning Series session (3-4 pm) with interested participants, including the working group.
Posted: 3/19/2023
Thursday, March 9th, 5:30 pm
Wexner Center for the Arts
"Currently on view in our galleries, Meditation Ocean features a six-channel video installation that presents an immersive ocean environment in which meditating scuba divers breathe along with aquatic wildlife. For this special evening, experience the work in the galleries and then go behind the scenes with participating artists and the exhibition’s curator to discover how it was developed, produced, and edited in collaboration with the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio. The speakers will illuminate the process, discuss the importance of lifelong learning and inquiry, share in moments of mindfulness, and participate in a Q&A with the audience after the conversation."
Left to right: Hope Ginsburg, photo: Terry Brown; Jennifer Lange; Alexis McCrimmon
Program Schedule:
Gallery experience with Wex educators in Meditation Ocean, 4:30–5:30 PM
Conversation in Film/Video Theater, 5:30–6:45 PM
Reception in Lower Lobby, 6:45–8 PM
Posted: 3/1/2023
"Explore how meditation connects breath, body, and creativity in this monthlong series at Wexner Center for the Arts programmed in conjunction with Meditation Ocean."
Click here to learn more about the entire series and register for individual sessions.
"Artists and meditation practitioners Hope Ginsburg, Anaïs Duplan, and Cadine Navarro each lead two meditation sessions or “chapters” that explore breathing and their respective artistic practices. Held virtually or in person, the sessions are designed to facilitate thinking, asking how meditation and breathing techniques can shape our approach to work, our relationship with the environment, and our sense of place in the world."
Left to right: Anaïs Duplan, photo: Ally Caple; Cadine Navarro, photo: Sophie Ansel; Hope Ginsburg, photo: Terry Brown.
Posted: 2/26/2023
Click here to read about 3D tactile representations of the Meditation Ocean exhibition for visitors with vision-based disabilities in an article by Beth Varcho and the Ohio State University Office of Technology and Digital Innovation.
"A new Wexner Center for the Arts multichannel video installation entitled Meditation Ocean will include “tactile images,” or “tactiles,” which are 3-D models that provide a touchable format to shape sensory perception beyond sight and allow visitors with vision-based disabilities to experience the exhibit and allow everyone else to engage with the work in a unique way."
Posted 2/26/2023
Click here for a deeper dive into the Meditation Ocean Constellation's work in the Wexner Center for the Arts Winter / Spring 2023 Learning Guide, written and designed by Amanda Tobin Ripley and Julia Harth, and produced by the Department of Learning & Public Practice. The guide also features projects by Sa'dia Rehman, A.K. Burns, and Anna Tsouhlarakis.
Posted 2/26/2023
Now through July 9th, the Meditation Ocean exhibition featuring M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow is on view at Wexner Center for the Arts. Here are the first snaps of the installation, with a video trailer to come. For up-to-the-minute looks, please peek at our Instagram here. Thank you to all of the Meditation Ocean Constellation!
Posted 2/26/2023
Meditation Ocean
Wexner Center for the Arts
Columbus, Ohio
February 10–July 9, 2023
"Meditation Ocean works for climate justice through underwater meditations and terrestrial actions, prompting us to consider the interdependence of human and environmental healing.
Conceived and directed by Hope Ginsburg, this exhibition is the culmination of her two-year Artist Residency Award and decades-long relationship with the center, including our Film/Video Studio. A collaborative, iterative project, Meditation Ocean was made by the Meditation Ocean Constellation, which comprises artists, writers, educators, meditators, musicians, curators, divers, and scientists.
The heart of the exhibition is M.O. Turtlegrass Meadow (2023), a large-screen, six-channel video installation that creates an immersive ocean environment, inviting contemplation and engagement. Shot over four days in the Florida Keys’ Biscayne National Park, the work captures eight meditating scuba divers as they “breathe with” ocean wildlife, rising from the seabed to float in meditation. Ten prerecorded, commissioned scripts allow audiences to join the divers in meditative practice within the installation.
Curated by Film/Video Studio Curator Jennifer Lange, this exhibition is accompanied by a series of related programs, workshops, and events. Developed collaboratively with our Department of Learning & Public Practice, they include the meditation series Breathe, which will also stream online. A gallery guide will feature a preface by Jennifer Lange and texts by Melody Jue and Anaïs Duplan."
Posted: 1/28/2023