Intrusive Rock Making

Our project aims to highlight the idea of patterns being inherent to both nature and the nature of humanity. As Ned Kuhn puts it: (in reference to the patterns created by the seemingly random flow of materials such as sand, fog, or water) “these patterns are not static objects, they are patterns of behavior- recurring themes in the repertoire of nature.” Natural patterns are often echoed by humanity, and this pattern of echoing patterns is part of the pattern of humanity.

                Our creation of false (or artificial) rocks from coloured concrete plays on ideas of geological art, natural phenomenon, and the tendency of humanity to seek to control and echo/reinterpret the natural patterns around us. Through the creation of building materials such as concrete, we interrupt natural processes/patterns and substitute our own processes/patterns that mimic or echo those of nature.

In the creation of concrete, for example, our use of limestone interrupts the natural, transformative sedimentary process of organic marine bodies changing into mineral material. Instead, we take such materials, interrupting their natural patterns, and transform them for our own uses. The creation of a material such as concrete, for example, disrupts the process of creating rock to create our own form of rock. Such natural patterns are interrupted, yet echoed in the process of interruption by humans. Such repetition of natural patterns through the hands of humanity leads to the creation of unnatural materials from natural materials and the use of rapid industrial processes to replicate the slow processes and patterns of nature.

Ideas from the reading such as material sciences and the idea of patterns found in the seemingly randomness of nature stood out to both my partner and I during our research of the reading.  Humanity, through the application of what we call natural sciences, often finds the need to create new substances to meet our specific wills, interrupting natural processes that often has a similar outcome to what we wish to achieve through our own. Patterns inherent to nature are identified by humans and given names, such as nonlinear systems, complex systems, or even chaotic systems of patterns. We identify them and use them to our own patterns, echoing them in our own processes of creation and destruction.