Wang Yu-Song

王煜松 

The Net of Tides is a project that attempts to capture the tide.

The work takes the fixed fishing net as its point of departure. Unlike a conventional fishing net that catches fish or shellfish, this invisible net collects the continual movement of tides and the ecological changes they produce. Only the floating buoys remain visible, while the "net" itself exists through the relationships between gravity, seawater, living organisms, and time.

The spheres are constructed from discarded expanded polystyrene collected along the coast of Xiangshan and covered with oyster shells, seashells, and fiberglass. Although they appear heavy, they remain buoyant. During high tide, they drift across the sea like temporary islands, carrying fragments of the seabed onto the water's surface. During low tide, they settle across the tidal flats, revealing another landscape where crabs, shellfish, birds, and people continuously reshape the shoreline.

Rather than producing a static installation, the work relies on the changing rhythms of the tide. The arrangement of the spheres is never fixed. Each tidal cycle reorganizes their positions, while marine organisms gradually inhabit their surfaces. The installation is therefore co-authored by gravity, the moon, tidal currents, living organisms, and time.

Rather than capturing the sea itself, The Net of Tides attempts to make visible the invisible forces that continually shape the coastal landscape. The work proposes that a place is not defined by fixed boundaries, but by the continuous interactions between celestial forces, ecological systems, materials, and human activity.