Exhibition created by Jadranka Sulić Šprem
Exhibition design: Jadranka Sulić Šprem and Dubravka Tullio
The creators of the exhibition set up received a commendation from the Croatian Museum Association for a creative and visually well designed approach in the production of an exhibition in 2015.
Duration: from December 15, 2015
About the exhibition: The adaptations made by deep sea organisms to low temperature, limited availability of food, high pressure, reduced oxygen concentration and absence of light were the inspiration for the title of the exhibition. Unease, stress, pressure, UNDER PRESSURE. The appearance of the set- up is linked with the big hit for Queen “Under Pressure”, which indeed makes this exhibition different from the run of the mill. The narrator of the exhibition is a royal flagfin fish, dressed in the best-known fashion creation of Freddie Mercury. For the purposes of the hanging of the exhibition, the Museum launched an initiative to collect old CDs and DVDs. In all, 10,000 were collected, and were used to make, among other things, the submarine Deepsea Queen, which takes us into the profundities of the Southern Adriatic Pit. The seabed is made of disks, a disco ball that creates movements in the space and museum objects of deep sea species of fish representing the deepest part of the southern Adriatic. Visitors can see museum objects of fish that in their natural surroundings live at depths of more than 800 metres. Visitors can become acquainted with the biology and ecology of the species on show via an application on interactive touch screens. Deep sea species have reduced bones and muscle mass, and their metabolism is slowed down increasingly with depth. The needs for movement that are related to visual interaction between predator and prey are reduced, i.e., movement is activated only if a predator or its prey is noticed. Some species have developed large jaws and stomachs, that enable any available prey to be captured. sea organisms have also adapted to life in the dark, where bioluminescence, or the ability of a living organism to produce and emit light, is the only source of illumination, by reducing or enlarging their eyes. For the sake of demonstrating bioluminescence to visitors, models of fish incorporating optical fibres have been made. Via an application on the interactive touch screens, visitors can dive down to a depth of 10,984 ± 25 m in the Marianas Trench where the greatest depth in the world has been measured, and during the dive find out the maximum penetration of light, the average depth of the oceans, the deepest point of the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean and so on. The visitors’ sense of hearing is stimulated not only by the single “Under Pressure” but also by the sound of the deep sea.
The exhibition catalogue is available in the Museum shop.
