Dana-Fiona Armour: Serpentine Currents

Have you ever swum with a sea snake? If not, you may soon get your chance. Apparently, UK waters are about half a century off becoming habitable to these potently venomous creatures, but if you’re impatient like me, and would prefer your first encounter today, Somerset House has you covered. 

Diana-Fiona Armour is the artist responsible: she has scaled up a 3D scan of this endangered sea snake (more professionally known as Aipysurus fuscus), sliced it into three parts, illuminated it with mesh-LED, and set it among the courtyard’s dancing fountains.

Projections based on 50 years of data from oceanographic sensors along the British coast suggest that, as seas continue to warm, this slippery species—today at home in the warm shallow coral reefs of north-western Australia—might one day share your New Year’s Day dip in British waters. Sea snakes, after all, are a sign of how the oceans are doing. So while the thought of sharing the water with one may seem alarming, in truth, it’s the scientist’s purple data programmed to pulse through Armour’s LED sculpture that is scarier.

‘Sea snakes are a vital, but often overlooked, indicator of marine health,’ says Armour. ‘By focusing on these animals, and highlighting how their existence is being threatened, I hope to draw attention to wider ocean and ecological issues.’

By day, Armour’s sculpture takes on the dry, armoured shell of shed skin—fitting, as we wave goodbye this week to the Year of the Wood Snake. Or rather, for those parents in the throes of half term, its translucent tubular body may recall an arts-and-crafts afternoon spent peeling scraps of PVA glue from the fingers of their children. By day, the data-driven light show that gives the sculpture its reason for being slightly fades; but by night, it makes for impactful viewing, the snake gleaming with the cold shine of a vodka luge: slick, slippery, disco-lit. 

Go at night, I’d say. It’s a good activity to while away that awkward half-hour between work and your Thursday-night date—who, I’m sure, will be delighted to hear everything you’ve learned about the importance of these remarkable creatures.