The initial aim of this project was to capture comb jelly movement, specifically the antiplectic metachronal wave of their combs, in a still, 2D way. The root of "antiplectic" relates to a field of study called plectics which is the study of complexity and its underlying simplicity, a principal that was taken through the whole process. While the second image still captures the movement of the combs, the project evolved to explore the scale and complex geometry of a comb jelly, ranging from the first image of the whole animal to the final image of the individual cells that make up each comb. The acetate embodies the transparent nature of the jellies and shows that each simple layer comes together to create a beautiful abstraction of the animal.

"The initial proposal that was selected after the intensive is entirely different from the project we made during the visathon weekend. We had met online with our critic and then again in person before the weekend and brainstormed entirely new ideas of what to create for the weekend. We then completely pivoted again the morning of the visathon weekend into a new initial proposal that we continued to develop over the weekend. It started as a study of movement, trying to capture metachronal movement in several animals like comb jellies, copepods, and millipedes, into a focus on the comb jelly again. We were thinking of making a mixed media zine that explored the different anatomy of the animal and finally settled on the acetate prints for the final product."

—Cassy

"My artist had never heard of comb jellies before which is part of why I wanted to be involved in visathon in the first place, to communicate to people that there is this beautiful creature in Narragansett Bay that most people have not heard of before. I brought my expertise about the animal to this project along with scientific literature that I could help translate to my artist so that we could make art together."

—Cassy