ABOUT THE ART

You are looking at fragments of shipwrecks. I used photogrammetry to extract the 3D forms from underwater footage of the wrecks. The site is Mallows Bay, Maryland, the largest ship graveyard in the Western hemisphere.  For the past year, I have been using underwater photogrammetry to explore monumental decay. This body of work consists of a series of prints, three of which have been submitted here, and a related virtual reality (VR) experience. The prints and the VR both depict the sunken ships of Mallows Bay, Maryland - the so-called Ghost Fleet. The work is made from 3D-scans of these shipwrecks taken underwater. The resulting forms oscillate between the recognizable and the abstract, simultaneously disorienting and inviting.  

About the site: The Mallows Bay Ghost Fleet is the largest ship graveyard in the Western hemisphere. Towards the end of World War I, the United States rushed to make a fleet of extra ships. They were made fast, and not well, for a war that ended before they were ever used. The ships never left harbor or saw action. Ultimately, they were salvaged for metal, partially burned and sunk in Mallows Bay, Charles County, Maryland. Their rotting wooden skeletons made an ideal habitat for local wildlife and in 2019 the area was designated as a wildlife sanctuary by the NOAA.  The area is most accessible by kayak, during the summer.

I use an underwater camera rig mounted to a kayak to capture footage of the space underwater. Through photogrammetry — the process of developing 3D models from 2D images — I have created new land/seascapes based on underwater footage of the wrecks.  

Medium: Digital renderings

Mollye Bendell is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in electronic and immersive media. She has developed augmented and virtual reality projects as a resident of Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. She is also a founding member of media arts collective strikeWare, which creates experiences grounded in our collective history, often using new technologies to emphasize the nowness of that history. Mollye has recently exhibited at Maryland Art Place and CURRENTS New Media Festival. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Website: mollyebendell.com

IG: @moss.piglet