The Long Fall: A Descent Into the Ocean’s Living Memory

Some of the most consequential processes shaping Earth’s climate take place at scales we cannot see.

Plankton—microscopic organisms drifting through the world’s oceans—are fundamental to the planetary systems that make life possible. Marine phytoplankton account for nearly half of the oxygen produced on Earth, while also drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Some of that carbon eventually travels downward through the ocean as organisms die, aggregate with other material, and sink toward the seafloor in a continuous shower known as “marine snow.”

The Long Fall: A Descent Into the Ocean’s Living Memory is an immersive moving-image installation by artist Jiabao Li in collaboration with Manu Prakash, Will Tallent, and Michael Bruner. The installation makes a largely invisible process perceptible by moving viewers across extraordinary differences in scale, from the microscopic realm of plankton outward to ecosystems and finally to the planet. The visual material incorporated into the installation emerges from seven years of research and 18 ocean expeditions.

A microscopic organism becomes a geological deposit, biological activity becomes planetary chemistry, and processes unfolding in seconds connect with transformations occurring over eons. The installation asks viewers to consider the ocean not simply as a body of water, but as a living archive in which biological and planetary histories are continually being written.

The Long Fall: A Descent Into the Ocean’s Living Memory is on view through February 12, 2027, at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Organized by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhibition is viewable during NAS building tours and special events.