The Sea Snake is Listening

It’s animals like the sea snake – a vital but often neglected bioindicator of marine health – that can be a crucial lens to environmental change. With fragile eco systems, rising sea temperatures and decreasing salinity, what would it take to retune our ears and listen to the sea snake? 

In her major courtyard commission for 2026, Serpentine Currents – Fragments of a Changing Future, Armour visualises how marine ecosystems are degrading and changing. 

The installation blends sculpture, science and responsive light technology, translating complex research and predictive ocean data from the British coast into visuals, with the sea snake at its heart.  

The dataset is also projected 50 years into the future, in a world where warming seas might allow sea snakes to inhabit UK waters. 

If the sea snake is telling us that the oceans are collapsing, with devastating consequences, then what does the future of our coastlines look like? 

Dana is joined by marine biologist, composer and researcher, Heather Spence, and researcher at French CNRS and Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Anthony Herrel.

The Process is an artist-led podcast series, developed by Somerset House, which explores the new ideas, big questions and surprising tangents which emerge from the artistic process.

Drawing on the creative community both on site at Somerset House and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows artists as they explore one idea they’re currently pursuing, to see where it ends up. From financial astrology to the black renaissance, quantum listening to the transformative powers of cute, along the way we hear from a cross-section of thinkers who have inspired them to help shape where it might go next.