finding sea level : elizabeth mcternan

finding sea level

Nida, Lithuania; Berlin, Germany
2015–2016

A friend recently told me this story of a conversation he overheard once when he was sailing. Two people were standing on the deck of a boat in the middle of the ocean, looking over the bow, out over the water. One of them turned to the captain and asked, "Where's sea level?"

For Finding Sea Level, I made a “high-resolution map-making apparatus” out of wood and acrylic glass and took it down to the beach, placing it directly on the line between the land and sea. As the waves lapped onto the beach, I traced their limits and accumulated a collection of lines, recording the change in the coastline over the course of one hour. This document was later transcribed as lithographs, etching the fleeting coastline into stone.