Even if the oceans account for the largest part of the earth´s surface, opportunities of accessing them physically – that is, except for seafaring people, particular professionals, and adventurous individuals – are almost negligible. Experienced pre-dominantly at its fringes or mediated through technical interfaces, the perception of ocean space, and especially the high seas, stems from various practices of use and description which in turn are bound to economic, cultural, technological, and aesthetic aspects of human culture.

To a large degree, it is through platforms that ocean space is brought to us, consciously or unconsciously. Here lies the idea of the oceans as a part of the world that resists human occupancy, where direct access is paralleled, if not replaced, by a flood of information transmitted through imagery and narratives.

The technologies and vehicles that are needed to access that space thereby serve as mediators between two realities, and on both ends, materially and conceptually, they largely orchestrate the potential immediacy of experience. Interfacing these two worlds of direct or constructed experiences, they can reveal, occlude, and even distort the intrinsic qualities of ocean space. These infrastructures themselves need maintenance and care to stand physically in one world, and smoothly tune into the other, seemingly forming a space in itself which frames views, as much as it establishes horizons. They form dividing lines between what is seen, as opposed to what is not in sight, suggesting a yearning for what lies beyond, fostering the question of to what extent we consider oceans as an inevitably domestic part of our world, and how can we gain access to them beyond physicality?

Carefully we design, build, and maintain infrastructures around access points. This may be to gain knowledge about the nature of the ocean itself, in order to protect it, strategically exploit it, and manage its resources, or to put into use its aesthetic dimensions for subtle mechanisms of seduction. Thereby a range of paradoxes come to the fore, conceptualised through our land-based existence, and inevitably informed by our naturally limited comprehension of spatial and temporal scales. Although accessible imagery abounds in photographs, videos, and maps, they seem to convey views of the ocean without us seeing it. And even if an ample amount of effort is undertaken, to revise earthbound descriptive terminology to capture the fluid quality of ocean space, we tend to project prevailing spatial concepts as we struggle to inflect new ones.

If we were not to know better, we might well assume that ocean space does not exist at all, at least not outside of our imagination. And if this were so, have we succeeded in grasping its entire vast existence in the means and mechanisms by which we allow it to speak to us?