Part of MFA Design Thesis Project
Mount Stromboli - 6Am - 2016
Seeing or the act of looking at a landscape refers to the biological mechanism of the eye which is the window to the individual’s being. But the act of seeing is intertwined with distractions, lack of spatial concentration and interference of speed. Speed of our saturated minds and speed of our rootless technologies, portraying our melancholy for the Earth, its elements and the loneliness of human beings lost into the earthly lives of turtles, birds and even rocks and sand dunes. “ in the gaze, “I” am absorbed, as they say. To the point of going astray. The gaze strays, necessarily. If it fixes itself on something, it waves and disappears. Thus, it slips or it jumps from place to place, but there are no “places”, there are no “details” for the gaze, as there are for vision ( the reproduction of a detail, in a work of painting, in an act of vision, of analysis, of theory). (Jean-Luc Nancy, the birth of presence)
Observing on the other hand, evokes sharpness, focus and an acute sense of presence in time. Observing a landscape for an extended period of time could result in the revival of senses, in the slow motion of the rhythms and in the appearance of signs. The stillness and the lack of movement of both the image and the landscape present themselves in front of the eye with the same sensibilities towards echoing the silence, solitude and disappearance. The photographic image isolates a vast geological time capsule into a rectangle, the frame of space and time. Staring at an entity for a long time reverses the speed and tricks the optical eye to see things, to extract lines and to shift the perspective. Therefore the act of isolating an edge, extracting a line or a punctum (Roland Barthes) from an image/landscape, becomes an analogy for the metaphysical self-isolation, the re-construction of the world and the very fundamental meaning of being in/with the world.
In this research, I explored the phenomena of “re-presentation” through the lens of observing and interpreting the volcanic landscape as a simultaneously active and passive entity/monument. Utilizing generative tools and algorithmic logic, I constructed a visual essay consisting of an encyclopedic archive of signs, symbols, alphabets, rhythms, images, objects, cartographic maps and texts that combined compose a sacred language.
Language of the volcano, language of the elements and language of the most abstract natural landscape visible to the eye. Immensely dreamlike and surreal. The volcano generates images of birth followed by images of death, at once, depicting the constant dance of creation and destruction inherent to volcanic activity.
I conducted a visual and semiological study to decode the message and to understand the meaning behind the very act of observing an active volcano, specifically, Mount Stromboli, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea located in the north coast of Sicily. This volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupting approximately 200-300 times per day generating an array of seismic waves in the sea. The activity of this volcano affects all the spheres of the Earth, Lithosphere, Biosphere, Atmosphere and Hydrosphere. The semiotic analysis consists of archiving and compiling the signifiers such as images, objects and texts as the result of observing the volcano (sign) in the search for the lost signified or our relation to the natural world.
Generative and algorithmic methods of composition resulted in various levels of abstraction/manipulation of three discontinued and isolated lines/signs extracted from three images I took during a visit to Stromboli in 2016, I aimed at translating the coded text written by the edge where the elements of earth meet and collide, the line where water blends with rapidly cooling lava and the particular path from which high viscous magma slides down from Stromboli’s “Sciara del Fuoco” and manipulates the layers of accumulated materials underneath. Reduction, abstraction and categorization of these lines and their visual elements resulted in demythologizing a secret/sacred language opposed to a universal one in the form of a code and a message. A code with a coherent internal meaning embedded with an urge to observe, an obsession to document and an illusion to disappear.
“A discontinued line becomes a series of signs that together form a continuous line, and possibly, a meaning” ( Elephant Child - Camille Henrot).
A distant and abstract cartographic map of a meta/imaginary volcanic landscape.
Feeding the 3 signs from the images of the volcano into the generative system of placement in a grid of 10x10, was taken as metaphor or suggestion of an eruption. The signs are distributed in space, each time differently based on the randomized algorithm similar to the way viscous material is thrown away from the volcano due to heat and pressure. The collection of 2d drawings depict an abstract eruption of the edges of the Mount Stromboli. Throughout this plastic study, I composed the original 3 signs in so many different modes of connection and intersection. Informed by the space or islands stuck in between the curves, I created rocks that represent the very essence of a volcanic eruption: The balance between creation and destruction. The use of generative tools allowed me to deconstruct the 3 curves and manipulate them in many different methods in order to observe their essence. The study and analysis of these observations could result in decoding the meaning and interpreting the language of the volcano.
Documentation of space/islands trapped between the generative juxtaposition of 3 curves in a grid of 10x10, randomized once.
Generative juxtaposition of 3 curves in a grid of 10x10, randomized once.
Generative juxtaposition of 3 curves in a grid of 10x10, randomized once. Dissected in 64 section for analysis.
Generative juxtaposition of 3 curves in a grid of 5x5, randomized 9 times.
Sacred alphabet
Paper cut experiments to recreate an imaginary shift in the landscape due to the liquid lava traveling downwards.
From the 3 plastic representational curves deriving from the volcano, I created paper collages as a reference to the shift of the edges and the change in the landscape due to magma movement . Manual addition and subtraction of 3 curves in an algorithmic manner, resulted in a new map of the mountain which further was realized in a wooden totem as a gift to the volcano. From this exploration I also made an acrylic instrument that generates new curves based on the rotation of each of the sections on the map.
Wooden totem representing the algorithm of 3 curves overlapping
New volcanic topographic representations created by the chemical reactions between copper and zinc (two components of submarine volcanic activity) in the glaze experiments.
3 open curves connected in 1 closed curve.
A set of plate and drinking glass evoking primal essence made from the 3 signs.
In this section, I added one more curve to the algorithm, the topographic closed border of the island interacting with the previous 3 signs, resulting in a volumetric digital totem.
A frame study informed by rock formations as the result of upward eruption and downward movement due to gravity. The 4 clay rocks have been formed by traveling in the air before hitting the surface 4 times.
A love letter to Stromboli.
Observing and studying the volcanic eruption and its geophysical characteristics, I used the process of 3D printing clay which extrudes earth from a nozzle as a metaphor for a volcano spilling out magma from the high pressure and high temperature core. The edges of the Mount Stromboli, having gone through a rigorous process of manipulation and algorithmic abstraction, were further extruded out layer by layer to create new volcanic cones and vents. The firing and glazing process also resembles the rock solidification process after the volcanic eruption. Ceramic kilns were considered the closest entity to a volcano in the design process pushing the solid clay and glazes in the melting point and the definitive chemical transformation. I created entirely new glazes to evoke a new visual presence for these ceramic objects. Materials involved in the glaze experiments are present in volcanic activities such as copper and zinc. Observing the volcano resulted in its own abstract representation. IInvestigating layering effect and various thickness of glazes applied to the edges of the ceramic pieces, evoke the visual outcomes of eruption or perhaps abstract crater formations, meta-(geological) places. The very simple act of observing the volcano resulted in its own abstract representation.
An algorithmic painting to depict the essence of lava movement between stablished path through which magma travels after each eruption.
Glaze Experiment to find a new land sensibility using Zinc, Copper, Glass and Pigment. The glaze test tile itself became a volcanic landscape.
Broken pieces due to thickness of glaze and high temperature in firing.
When magma escapes the volcano it rapidly cools in different stages and the lack of gas presence from the eruption creates Obsidian rock, mainly composed from silica with low water content. These ceramic forms were then used as molds for the process of slump casting glass to form with heat. From the edges of a volcano, erupting new mass is added to the land and new landscapes are created, perhaps in the form of a lake or a glass bowl. The product development involved many stages of breaking and failing due to the different speed with which ceramic and glass expand and contract unusual to the traditional slumping methods. The details of design in the final outcomes suggests different instances of breaking and destruction inherent to the process as a documentation of failure.
Glass collage using the broken pieces stitching them back together with stringers.
Slumping process and patterns created in the glass fusing process.
First prototype successfully slumped over the 3d printed clay mold.
The black line is a detail artifact suggesting the place where the same material has been broken in the slumping in the previous experiments.
The final form was generated through a subtraction process between a circular array of ceramic generative forms and the outer edge or a circle. In this last stage of the project, I aimed at creating an object with semantics and visual similarities to a volcanic vent and in particular the topographic image of Stromboli.
Waterjet cutting of sheets glass before full fuse in the kiln
Final form printed with clay and glazed.
Final form represented as a dish
In an interview Michael Wetzel asks Jaques Derrida about the question of lines in nature:
" MW: This may be a good moment to turn to Balzac's story Le chef d'oeuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece), where in the context of a discussion of the most perfect painting, the thesis is put forth that there are no lines in nature. Can we say that the line is a break, the moment when technê, the technology of representation, appears?
JD: The question of the line leads us back again to the paradox of time and acti/passivity. In Aristotle, as you know, the question of time is connected to the question of grammê, which signifies first of all, in this case, the line. The difference between light and shadow in nature, their dividing line, as it were - Balzac ould say that this is not a line. A line as such appears when the one who draws - with a sharp point, for example - makes an incision and inscribes a mark, even if he thus follows a natural line. When Dibutade follows a line, she is active; she has an instrument, a technique, but her human activity consists in passively taking as a model a line that is already there. And therefore at the point, at the sharp point or the pointed tip of the pencil, or at the extremity of the metal or wooden point, activity is modeled on a given. It forms itself onto passivity, following something that is given in advance. So is it the line that is given? This depends on what one calls a "line". But the possibility of the difference between light and shadow traces a line that I can then retrace with the point of my pencil. When Dibutade traces, she begins to retrace. And the remarking of the retracing is at once active and passive. But the possibility of this repetition, this iterability, marks in advance the very threshold of perception. Activity is at the service of a certain passivity. And yet this passivity is not passive with respect to some given thing, light or shadow, but with respect to a difference. Activity or passivity touch together or are articulated along a differential border. This is the very movement of the trace: a movement that is a priori photographic. The fact that it did not wait for the invention of what for more than a century we have called photography does not mean that this technique is not an irreducible event and a transformation. But it is necessary also to think this irreducibility against the background of what made it possible."
Copy, Archive, signature, a conversation on photography - Jaques Derrida
In this exploration I made an attempt in translating the curved line into words which ultimately transforms into a poem, using curves extracted from Stromboli. A poem written by the volcano or a letter written to the volcano.
I focused on creating a generative system from which I could translate a curved line into words.
In the process, I created 3 different letter grids and placed the curves within the grids with a consistent logic and with the exact same scale to keep the results reliable.
The design of the grids was informed by the constraints of number 26 (number of letters in the English language) and its prime number components: 2 and 13
I aimed at designing a generative system that curved lines are inputs and words are outputs.
The double letter groups were extracted in three different methods in 3 different grid systems:
1. Where the curvature intersects with the grid.
2. Where the straight yellow line connecting the end points and high points of the curvature intersect.
3. Where the curved line intersects with the longest perpendicular diameters of the circle.
The letters were then fed into a word generator webpage to create all the possible semantic juxtapositions. From this collection of words I composed a poem which is unique to Stromboli.
word generator:
Oxhide
Deify
Deoxy
Dopey
Edify
Epoxy
Fixed
Foxed
Hoped
Howdy
Hyped
Joyed
Oxide
Yowie
word generator:
Duets
word generator:
Joky
Yolk
Boy
Job
Joy
Kob
Lob
Yob
word generator:
Lookouts
Unknowns
Monsoon
She
Sew
word generator:
Hurt
Hart
Rath
Rort
Ruth
Tahr
word generator:
Dight
Knight
Dhak
Gath
Goth
Kith
Thig
Thud
Thug
To deify the bold structure of the mountain, expanding to the very edge of the sea,
From every imaginable angle.
The rock formations left little space for growth.
Growth of ruth and assurance.
Thud and oxide sounds of the core activities of the volcano.
Kobs and harts of the landscape reflect their fear in the subtle changes in the movement of the eye.
Focused on the surface of the water,
Counting the density of sulfur in each cubic meter of the volumetric body of the Tyrrhenian Sea,
Trapped between the land and the island.
The active volcanic island in the Northern waters of Sicily.
Unknowns dight the senses and polishes the skins of the animals.
Dopey joy of listening to the slow shift of material,
Upwards,
In a constant conflict with gravity.
Love Letter to Stromboli
The speed with which the various layers of rocks, trees, birds and waters were folding onto each other was evoking a sense of absence and disappearance.
From the Northern points on the map of Italy all the way down, it takes a train with low capacities of moving the distance between two mountains in a short period of time, approximately 12 hours to arrive to Napoli central station. It’s overwhelming. It’s chaotic. It’s loud. It’s dangerous. It’s bizarre. It’s exhausting. The city sits at the mercy of Mount Vesuvio. The stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Napoli in Campania, about 9 km east of the city and a short distance from the shore. This area is the land of volcanic eruptions, trapped between two tectonic plates. Volcanic eruption occurs as the result of subduction of one of the plates beneath the other.
Time spent in proximity to Vesuvio, on the boat that never left the shore, in constant movement as a response to the forces of the sea, felt infinitely shrunk into one singular second. The weather and the water made the passengers obliged to spend the night in their inert and yet floating rooms inside the ship and to watch the sunrise from the exact point of view of the observers on the port. A day un-lived or lived twice. Another pizza Napoletana followed by dense sour espresso and another sunset from the exact point of view of the same observers on the same port in which the ship was resting and postponing its departure.
Unexpected wait and suspension of experience created an immense desire to document every single frame of the port sitting farther every second. Exponentially it became smaller and invisible. The stretch of the dramatic colors of the sun rays clashing with the components of the atmosphere, while moving downwards, evoked a long and dizzying night over the extinct and dormant submerged volcanoes. Purity of lack of light on the surface of the water, being assertively pushed away from the mechanical forces of the ship, created a simulation for blindness, despite the fact that aggressive lights of the deck were filling the hidden space in the periphery of the eyes. The loud sound of volumetric bodies of water being compelled to overlap, confirmed their presence and their continuous effort in stopping the liner movement of the ship forward.
Nauseous and dizzy, the body found a corner on the front of the boat to observe the divine transition of the dark directly into the bright. The choreographic dance of hue and saturation. Another immense urge to document every frame and every second. The triangular, bold and vivid structure of volcano emerged from within the innocent pink diffused in the atmosphere. The body of the mountain magnified proportional to the distance travelled, divided by the time spent traveling the distance between the ship and the active volcano. In fact, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It stretched to the point of vanishing and it stretched until it was gone. The sudden crash of the boat with the old and decomposing wooden structure of the port, summoned the topographic line drawn between the Mount Vesuvius and Mount Stromboli.
Obsidian with its sharp raw edges in my hand, resembles a prehistoric arrow head, carved and shaped by the necessity and knowledge of the early humans. Igneous rock formations from the rapid cooling of lava, a natural glass rich in Silica and low in water.
Reduction of the whole volcano as an entity into one physical object. Diffusion of the tender smell of the skins of citrus fruits and the oil released from their leaves due to heat and temperature. Immediate sense of isolation on an island. Separation from other lands, other biomes and other animals. The temporality of life due to the lack of knowledge about the next eruption, articulated the experience on the island. Serene and slow bodily movements of its inhabitants, devoid of mundane rush for success. The level of humidity and bug noise mixed with distinct lingering scent of volcanic activity, created a surreal atmosphere of lust and terrestrial pleasure.
Unpredicted hours lost in the streets without electricity and structure built with white walls emitting moonlight, led me to the very edge of the shore where the excess of lava slides down the slope of the mountain adding to the mass of under the water land. Documenting this very moment in time, resulted in a 20 minutes video with an out of focus image of the moon oscillating between four corners of the frame. Magnetic desire to wetness and to float on the surface of the liquid lava rapidly cooling down and solidifying while reflecting back the dazzling rays of moon.
Thinking about the width of breath, the length of the gaze and the warmth of his hands. Slender and firm, his presence on the slippery and congealed black sand on the beach. White fumes escaping the inferno. In a few minutes we will start walking on the rough body of the volcano following a narrow path from which the sacred dislocation begins.
Geological characteristics of the mountain dictated the pace in which we climbed to the summit. The air density slightly dropped as we approached the very top of the rock formations. Shards of sand particles entering ears and eyes, interfering with the act of observation. Protective equipment failed at isolating the skin from contact with volcanic gas carried upwards by heat and air pressure.
One person at a time.
One step forward towards the very edge of the cliff.
One specific moment to look inside of its melting and fluid stomach.
The internal order of the laws of thermodynamics encapsulated in a culmination of explosions approached my face. The duration of that particular second was eternally manipulated by the landscape in front of my eyes for just one second. The longest one second I have ever experienced stuck in a limiting human body. The most absurd and undeniable second feeling my feet on the ground.
The myth, the pain, the loss, the soul, all leaving my carbonic body in a state of instant death followed with a state of instant birth.
An infinite coil of death and birth.
Origins and extinction.
Sorrow and knowledge.
Speed and withdrawal.
The optical distortion from the burning exposure to naked magma, lingered in my sight for the duration of the walk towards the other side of the volcano. The contrast between redness of the core and darkness of the outer crust combined with the highlights of a mysterious full moon desensitized the blood running under my skin. Sliding down the lava dunes in a soft and mesmeric rhythm. A constant sensation of being drowned in the volcanic quicksand and being swallowed by the worms of the land. Salty and poignant wind of the midnight brushed my face in a sobering gesture.
The time and the number of hours spent on the island was eventually reduced to a few photographs, a few videos, some voice recordings, a 3 inch long obsidian rock and a collection of written notes and poems.
I left Stromboli the next morning not knowing that I will constantly keep going back to the mementos I gathered during this trip in the coming years.
©21st Century
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