CROCO, Coastal and Regional Ocean COmmunity model is a new oceanic modeling system built upon the non-hydrostatic kernel. The four wood panels from top to bottom represent the horizontal turbulence velocity ‘u’ at different depths: in the upper layer close to the sea surface, the turbulence is the strongest due to the influence of the surface wind and cooling. It gradually becomes smoother downwards under the surface mixed layer. The velocity scale was expanded to varying degrees in each of the levels in order to visualize the scale of dynamic. The rightmost figure shows the vertical velocity ‘w’, displaying the stratification of the ocean. The three interior panels show the simulated water domain of ​​75m by 75m with a resolution of 1.25m.

“At the beginning, I wanted to use some knowledge of ocean modelings and fluid mechanics to expand the artistic creation of my project… CROCO, Coastal and Regional Ocean COmmunity model, is a new oceanic modeling system built upon the non-hydrostatic kernel. At a time when other ocean models focus more on vertical dynamics, this non-hydrostatic feature of CROCO brings horizontal dimensions into consideration, which will be an important step of ocean model development. The resolutions of CROCO range from kilometers to meters, which is also an important advantage. The application of CROCO is gradually expanding to solve practical problems such as coupling with other biochemical models.”

- Xiaoyu (Rain) Fan

“Our preparation process included a lot of brainstorming and bouncing between different proposals and ideas around themes of modeling and reversibility. Sometimes we would shelf an idea and then circle back to it later, finding it more relevant to our mutual interests in retrospect. Ultimately what was most grounding was coming back to Rain’s modeling data and trying to find a way to spatialize it.”

- Lauren Glenn

“In the process, what surprised me the most was the artistic inspiration of RISD's teachers and students. I remembered the first day when we had the brainstorming session, I talked with Emma, Joy and many other people, all of them could understand exactly what I meant though I didn’t think I had a clear mind… The other thing that surprised me a lot was the operational ability of Lauren and so many cool wood machines in RISD woodshop. Lauren seemed super familiar with every machine in the woodshop and good at operating them. And, I was so surprised by the accuracy of the woodwork, they are counting less than millimeter scale to make the models perfect.”

- Xiaoyu (Rain) Fan