Shimmering Abyss

Program Notes

Shimmering Abyss takes its inspiration from the work of biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel. While his lithographs were originally designed as scientific diagrams, Haeckel took profound artistic liberties, exaggerating the foreign, symmetrical beauty of marine organisms. The complex shapes and symmetries found within imply a fluid sense of motion, where hyper-stylized forms suggest an impossibly alien underwater world. Shimmering Abyss explores this swirling, contradictory tension. The work is in three connected movements: Cubomedusae, Stephoidea, and Thalamophora.