Somewhere Beyond The Sea - Interactive Thesis Exhibition 2025
Somewhere Beyond the Sea was my thesis show led and created entirely by myself during my senior year of college. The show is an interactive experience where viewers themselves are encouraged to participate in activities and engage with the work in this temporary third place.
My thesis uses interactive art as a means to explore the topic of Third Places, their importance in community building, and why they’re in decline in the United States today. The Aquarium serves as my main visual theme because the aquarium is my own personal third place that I lost when I was younger.
While I am inspired by many artists and creatives, no particular creative served as a primary reference for this show. Rather, my research took the form of reading The Great Good Place, 1989, by Ray Oldenburg, the only book that discusses the history, relevance, and threat of erasure towards third places.
My first steps were to create several illustrations of fish, both as a way to warm myself up to drawing cartoon fish in my art style, but also to create characters and personalities that viewers of the show will latch onto and connect with.
These fish then become representative of the viewer. The viewer starts by taking a booklet containing the show mascot, Casper the Clownfish, who guides them through the space, and chooses a fish sticker of their choice and carries it with them throughout the show.
The viewer then approaches informational posters mounted to the walls discussing various aspects of third places. The first standalone poster helps viewers understand the thoughts associated with third places, and the series of 4 posters on the next wall cover a timeline of third places.
While walking through the show, the viewer also has the opportunity to take part in a scavenger hunt located inside the booklet. This encourages viewers to look closer at the work, have fun, and try to spy all of the little secrets and references I’ve included. One piece that contains many of these is the second standalone poster, which highlights the warm, inclusive, and welcoming nature of third places.
The final set of posters illustrates the top three reasons third places are in decline in the United States.
The viewer then approaches the highlight of the show, a large 7’x7’ mixed media collage I created, intended as a photo wall for friends, family, and viewers to take pictures at. The collage contains candid imagery of people in third places, my own fish illustrations, hand drawn bubbles, beads and hot glue stylized to look like water, movie tickets, and other items local to the third places shown in the collage.
The last stop is where the viewer finally places their fish sticker onto this large sign listing various third places. The viewers are encouraged to look at the diversity of the fish around them and the variety of fish in a single chosen location. The viewer has now become a part of the show, having marked their time in this temporary third place.
By the end of the exhibition’s runtime, over one hundred viewers participated in placing a fish onto the sign, and even more had walked through, viewed, and experienced the show.
When I took down the show, there were no stickers left for anyone to take, and all booklets/brochures had been grabbed. The effectiveness and impact of this show is incredible beyond words, and has played an integral role into shaping the projects and topics my work will explore in the future.
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