KidSpace Children’s Museum, Pasadena, CA

“Forest Under the Sea”, commissioned by KidSpace Children’s Museum, is an interactive, immersive exhibit, in which children can play as if they are in an undersea kelp forest. They can turn a wheel to make a school of sardines swim around and above them in the airspace. They can crank wheels on a large cabinet structure to make a mama dolphin and her baby appear to be swimming, as well as pull ropes to make the jellyfish swim. The installation is made almost entirely from waste-stream materials, including plastic water bottles (sardines), waste packaging plastics (jelly fish), recycled foam rubber (dolphins), waste CATV cable (kelp), wire clothes hangers and repurposed coroplast. Through the evident waste ecology aesthetic, the hope is to inspire people to consider the impact of our waste, particularly plastic waste, upon the ocean ecology. The exhibit is also intended to inspire an appreciation of the beauty, vitality and preciousness of the kelp forest biome.