Unearthed
The photograph, when first encountered by the visitor, depicts an unearthed, processed, and fractured piece of land. The rock is exposed for the first time in its immensely long formation period. It is exposed through machines, explosives, and large scale cutting tools, leaving behind a deep and complex set of marks embedded into the rock itself. At the same time, natural formations such as cracks, gaps, and color variances, formed long before external intervention, remain visible. Two processes, one of formation processes and the other of human intervention, differentiated by scale, time, form, and duration define our relationship with nature as a resource and frame our intervention into it.
A closer inspection reveals a deeper layer of information regarding formation processes and human intervention. When a visitor approaches the work physically, it reveals acoustic traces of these aspects by producing sounds of varying frequencies and loudness. Each specific spot on the panel produces a unique acoustic effect, originating from that exact location, creating a representational map of marks, cracks, and their formative origins. Although the sounds are simulated, they strongly resemble high and low frequency tones associated with both machine activity and natural processes. In this sense, the sounds act as a kind of time machine, reproducing the acts of interference and natural formation that shaped this piece of land. Each time a viewer comes into close contact with the work, these processes are reactivated.
2016
Video of the prototype version