holding the ocean

a journey connecting Scotland and the ocean

EXPLORE WITH OSSIAN

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Ossian will be your guide as you journey through our stories of the ocean and land interactions

WHO IS OSSIAN?

Ossian is a common octopus that can be found in the rocky shorelines around Scotland. The octopus is known for being the most intelligent invertibrate species.

Ossian is named for the narrator of Scottish poet James McPherson’s Fingal and Temora. More information on Ossian, James McPherson and the debate around the authenticity is available on wikipedia.

ABOUT HOLDING THE OCEAN

Holding the Ocean is a project conceived by artist, Eve Mosher under the Ocean ARTic project, a partnership of People Ocean Planet from the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland, Blue Action EU Project, and Creative Informatics and predominantly funded by Creative Scotland.

Holding the Ocean is exploring our connection on land, in particular Scotland, with what is happening, being observed and modeled on the ocean. The project is first, a personalized story exploration built on a chatbot model in collaboration with the team at inChat, Hector Michael Fried and Rory Gianni. The second iteration of the project is to take it to villages and towns around Scotland in connection with an immersive audio visual experience.

This project has been made with support from Dr. Chris Leakey (MASTS and People Ocean Planet), Dr. Hannah Grist (Blue Action Eu Project), Dr. Inge Panneels (Creative Informatics) and Hannah Ladd-Jones (MASTS and People Ocean Planet).

In addition to Holding the Ocean, the Ocean ARTic project is supporting the development and touring of new work by composer Michael Begg.