Ocean Memory Project

The Ocean Memory Project is the interdisciplinary project behind the central question in Melody Jue: Ocean Memory: whether the ocean has memory. The source describes a Friday Harbor gathering of scientists, artists, and Melody Jue, catalyzed by Daniel Cohn’s question and deepened by Jody Deming’s work on sea ice as a microbial habitat.

The project matters because it turns Ocean Memory into a shared research problem rather than a single-discipline claim. Its workshops, art projects, smell-walk experiments, underwater memorial work, and sensory translations connect scientific archives with literary, philosophical, and artistic approaches.

Key Claims

• Ocean memory requires collaboration across science, art, humanities, and field experience.
• Informal time, shared meals, walks, and repeat contact helped participants build enough trust to disagree productively.
• The project treats ocean media as active conditions for memory, not neutral containers for human stories.

Connections

• Melody Jue — Long Now speaker who synthesizes the project for the source.
• Daniel Cohn — artist whose question frames the project.
• Jody Deming — scientist whose sea-ice work supplies a microbial memory example.
• Ocean Memory, Milieu-Specific Analysis, Chemosensation, and Multispecies Archives — concepts the project helps organize.