Charybdis/Abiogenesis: Ambiguous Incident Interpretation in the Deep Sea
What were we trying to achieve:
Cycle 1 of the Unsecurities Lab was designed to simulate an immersive security incident rooted in deep time and deep space—specifically the deep sea as a metaphor for unknown systems and threat detection failure.
By engaging two immersive artworks set in submarine environments, we asked: what happens when interdisciplinary experts are immersed in environments they cannot categorise or control? The workshop aimed to surface how sensory complexity and ecological unfamiliarity overwhelm existing frameworks of analysis and response, and whether new, cross-disciplinary heuristics for navigating systemic instability could be found in those breakdowns.
What was the focus:
Participants encountered two artworks by Joey Holder, each rooted in the alien ecologies of the ocean floor:
- Charybdis (Session 1) presented an AI-generated horror ecology populated by speculative sea creatures, cellular diagrams, and deep-sea mining footage. Participants responded to it as a live "incident" using adapted cybersecurity protocols, revealing breakdowns in disciplinary language and interpretive habit.
- Abiogenesis (Session 2) portrayed four posthuman marine intelligences—octopus, sponge, jellyfish, plankton—as avatars of alternative security logics. Groups developed “stabilisation protocols” from the perspective of these entities, producing frameworks based on latency, resonance, opacity, and collective sensing.
The deep sea functioned as a space of cognitive saturation, distributed agency, and epistemological vulnerability. One participant remarked, “We’re not analysing a threat—we’re being analysed by it.” Another noted, “It felt like an extinction event happening in real time.”
The accompanying report features live transcript excerpts, speculative protocol designs, and thematic illustrations that document how disciplinary knowledge was unsettled and recomposed through immersion. It captures moments of rupture in language and interpretation, treating these as signals of emerging cross-field heuristics for navigating instability.
Bio on Joey Holder:
Joey Holder is a UK-based artist working with CGI, scientific imaging, and speculative fiction to simulate posthuman ecosystems and distributed intelligence. Her work draws heavily on deep-sea biology and emergent life systems, often created in collaboration with researchers across marine science, biotechnology, and AI. She is currently pursuing PhD research on “open worlding,” exploring how artworks can act as shared speculative environments for collaborative thought.
List of Attendees:
- Sarah Chan – Neuroscience
- Bill Oxbury – Intelligence & Defence
- Joe Bourne – Defence, Turing Institute
- Andrew Dwyer – Cybersecurity
- Daniel Prince – Cybersecurity / Incident Analysis
- Niki Panteli – Information Systems
- Sally Keith – Marine Biology
- Jakob Vinter – Cellular Biology
- Alexandre Benedetto – Evolutionary Biology
- Craig Jones – Cybersecurity Management
- Basil Germond – Political Theory / Maritime Security
- Hassan Raza – AI & Data Science
- Kwasu Tembo – Speculative Philosophy
- Leon Cruickshank – Strategic Design
- Jamie Jenkinson – Artist / Digital Curation
- Tadeo Lopez-Sendon – Curator, AND Festival
“We all have these structures within which we construct meaning. If the artwork makes participants question or destabilize their usual frames of reference, then it's working.”
“There was a mismatch between my embodiment and my training—that was the breach.”