“Sea you remember” iceberg
Kyiv, Ukraine
2025, Senior, Interactive & Multimedia
Project Description: Sea You Remember is a web-based project that weaves together my personal journey with an actionable educational tool for Ukrainian children. At its core, the project is a scrollable iceberg style website, in which each layer reveals a progressively deeper layer of my connection, feelings and opinions on future of nature and pressing problems. When users first arrive at the site, they see a pastel-blue background representing the ocean’s surface. Stylized illustrations of Black Sea fish—such as sprats, gobies, and jellyfish—swim across the water blues. Each fish icon corresponds to a button, pressing on which will reveal a tiny part of my life story: my childhood fascination with geography quizzes; my earliest memories of exploring the Carpathian mountains; my first snorkeling expedition in Red Sea; and the moment I confronted the sight of slimy green watergrass heaped on the beach, evidence of pollution and ecological imbalance, my first independent research. Clicking any fish causes a personal reflection. For example, one pop-up describes how seeing algae piled on Arcadia Beach during a family outing first plunged me into a quiet worry about the sea’s health—an anxiety that eventually motivated me to take action. As visitors scroll downward, the background color shifts from light turquoise to deeper navy, mirroring the ocean’s depth. In the mid-layer, they encounter fish representing actions besides thoughts, for example seeking solace under the ancient plane trees of Taras Shevchenko Park during air raids, discovering that nature’s stillness can be a refuge even amid conflict. Deeper, the story tells how I switched from thinking to researching, analyzing pressing problems, my propositions to create a solution, my opinions on governmental action in response. Near the bottom of the scroll lies the “bedrock” layer, nearly black. Here, visitors find my most intimate reflections: the realization that war not only devastates human communities but also damages fragile marine ecosystems; the moment I understood that deliberate acts—like participating in international ecological conferences on biochemistry—could ripple outward to benefit both people and the nature; and the unwavering hope that lies at the heart of my work. It is at this final depth that users discover the prototype for the “See you, remember?” (yes, it sounds just like the project name) interactive encyclopedia and quiz device designed to educate Ukrainian children aged 8–16 about the Black Sea’s biodiversity and the urgent challenges it faces. The quizbook concept has two complementary forms: a physical model inspired by the vintage “Young Genius” handheld quiz device, and a digital prototype embedded as a Canva spreadsheets. The physical quizbook is conceived as a spiral-bound unit with a small LCD panel at its center, flanked by two sets of buttons labeled “Player 1” and “Player 2.” Pressing any button randomly selects a multiple-choice question from a curated database of questions I prepared. Correct answers illuminate a “bonus” icon on the screen; incorrect answers briefly display the correct fact. Between hardware sections, illustrated pages feature line drawings of Black Sea species. All quiz questions have been compiled from Ukrainian scientific articles on topics such as jellyfish blooms, coastal erosion, and water quality in Odesa; each question is designed to be both engaging and relevant to local ecology. The digital quizbook appears together with physical concept of the book at the bottom of iceberg, allowing the user to access the first section (two other sections are in progress!) of the encyclopedia in PDF format. I designed and drew the background of the book entirely by myself. My drawings are mainly sea waves and small doodles. The target audience for Sea You Remember is Ukrainian students living in coastal oblasts such as Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson, many of whom have grown up witnessing both the wonders and the hardships faced by the Black Sea’s communities. Secondary audiences include environmental educators, after-school clubs, and nonprofit organizations focused on marine conservation. Sea you remember offers an immersive experience of reflection and discovery. By anchoring the project in genuine personal history and pairing it with a robust, research-based educational tool, I aim to inspire and equip Ukrainian youth to remember, protect, and cherish the Black Sea for generations to come.
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Reflection
Over the years, I found myself pulled back to Odesa sea again— in the stories I created, the questions I asked, the wounds I had from sharp shells and the research I pursued. But the war has torn the flow of life, the microscopic greenish aura of love. Forests were scarred. Marine life was disrupted. But despite the destruction, I also saw quiet examples of resilience—like the microscopic algae being studied in space by a NASA scientist I was fortunate to collaborate with. It reminded me that even the smallest organisms can carry life forward. Today I tell my story through is a scrollable interactive iceberg that begins with a personal memory: walking along Odesa’s shore as a child and noticing heaps of decaying green seaweed thrown onto the beach. The smell was strange. The color unnatural. I didn’t know the word “ecosystem” yet, but I knew something wasn’t right. That day planted a quiet worry inside me—a seed that would later grow into action. Deep down, the iceberg finishes with my "thank you" to nature, a final stage of my story - an encyclopedia "See you, remember?" My message is: when we remember the sea, we begin to care. And when we care, we act. I hope my project makes young minds in my country wonder—and then wonder enough to protect.