New York has the High Line, Miami has the Underline, and in the coming years, Miami Beach will have the ReefLine – a landmark public work featuring an underwater art-strewn sculpture park, a carbonaceous artificial reef, and a seven-mile snorkeling trail off Fourth Street in South Beach. to Bal Harbor.
Ximena Caminos, art curator, cultural placemaker (one who uses planning, art, and design for community development), and founder of the ocean-focused nonprofit BlueLab Preservation Society, led this multidisciplinary project in collaboration with Miami-based art studio Coral Morphologic. Other partners include the City of Miami Beach, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), which is responsible for the 15-acre master plan, and players in the blockchain universe such as Aorist, a digital arts platform, and Decentraland, a 3D virtual world.
The city recently approved a $5 million bond issue to help fund the ReefLine (putting it on par with Miami Beach’s major cultural institutions, such as the New World Symphony and Bass Museum), and the first and second phase of the project should begin construction in early 2023.
“The ReefLine is a manifestation of all the realms I care about most,” said Ms. Caminos. “It is art as a tool for change. It’s durable. It is informed by science and technology. And above all, it is participatory, free and open to the public.”
Ms. Caminos shared the concept behind the ReefLine, how technology and art can come together and what has helped her move forward. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the ReefLine come about?
The idea came from a conversation I had with marine biologist Colin Foord, the founder of Coral Morphologic, about how artificial reefs could be used to restore and protect Miami Beach’s marine ecosystem, which, along with the natural coral reefs in the area is disappearing. It got me thinking about how we can unite art and science to create sustainable change. Colin and I eventually came up with a grant proposal for the Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award, which is looking for really out-of-the-box ideas, and we won. That gave us the seed money to bring the idea to life.
What should the ReefLine do?
Most people are unaware that concrete is the second most used material on Earth after water and that its production is responsible for 8 percent of all global carbon emissions. I wanted to build something that would help capture the more than three billion tons of carbon dumped into the atmosphere each year and set an example for other cities.
For the ReefLine, British artist Petroc Sesti developed an entirely new art medium called Carbon Xinc – a cementless geopolymer concrete containing mineralized carbon dioxide gas that captures carbon destined for the atmosphere and stores it indefinitely.
In terms of biodiversity, there is very little habitat left for reef species to live and reproduce. The ReefLine will be a public housing for fish with tons of nooks and crannies for life to grow and thrive. We are working with marine biologists and field experts who will test the site for coral resilience, to learn what enhances a coral’s ability to survive and recover from environmental stressors, and there will be numerous community programs for those who want to help scientists monitor fish populations. or plant coral fragments grown in coral nurseries onto specific parts of the ReefLine.
You work with a great creative talent. What can we expect from the design?
After we won the grant, I called OMA’s architect Shohei Shigematsu to create the master plan. We’ve worked together before and I knew his brilliance would take this project to the next level. The first rig, which we tested in the University of Miami’s hurricane simulator, will be sunk 180 meters off Fourth Street. We commissioned Argentine artist Leandro Erlich to create a site-specific work featuring 22 life-size Carbon Xinc car sculptures submerged approximately 6 meters under water. The artwork serves as a cautionary tale about what will happen to our coastal cities if we don’t tackle global warming. It also takes this modern symbol of carbon emissions and turns it into a carbon sink that will be colonized by marine life, which is just awesome.
Sesti uses laser scanning techniques to create a work titled “Heart of Okeanos,” a five-foot Carbon Xinc sculpture of a blue whale heart, inspired by a real 400-pound specimen preserved by scientists after it washed ashore in Canada in 2014. We plan to unveil the artwork during Art Week in December before symbolically returning it to the ocean.
The installations are connected by a snorkel path made of OMA-designed shapes that fit together like Legos and act like a coral topiary. For future installations, we have a bucket list of artists we’d like to work with, and plan to hold open calls and public competitions to ensure everyone’s ideas are represented.
In addition to innovative materials, how does technology play a crucial role in the development of the ReefLine?
During Art Week last year, BlueLab Preservation Society teamed up with Aorist and the artist Refik Anadol, who created an NFT art collection of wildly colorful AI data sculptures inspired by the ReefLine. A portion of the NFT sales went to the ReefLine. This year we’re teaming up again with Aorist, as well as London-based art collective and collaborative studio Random International. I also just applied for a grant to create an augmented reality iteration of the ReefLine so people can use their phones to see digital images of the underwater art installations from the beach detailing the artists and aquatic animals that live there. . And with Decentraland, we are building a ReefLine in the metaverse so that people can adopt a virtual coral with cryptocurrency, which is great for raising awareness of environmental issues.
What do you hope the ReefLine will achieve?
This project is a mammoth undertaking, and there have been times when I’ve hesitated because it feels like a mammoth task. But I was lucky enough to see ocean protector Dr. Meeting Sylvia Earle – “Her Royal Deepness!” — at the Aspen Climate Ideas Summit. At first she was skeptical of what we were doing, but after reviewing all the research and speaking with the field experts, she publicly affirmed that she was in favor of the project because we are rebuilding what once was, and it is a model that others can inspire and follow. That really gave me the courage and strength to keep going.
I hope the ReefLine will start a global conversation about restoring the health of our oceans and convincing people that they can make a difference. There’s no better place to do that than underwater in Miami Beach, the zero point of climate change.
