2022: Art & Design BA Hons
Showcase
Statement
This installation puts into perspective our experience on Earth and applauds the species that were able to overcome major periods of extinction and stand the test of time.
The work focuses on the fern as a living fossil and an example of resilience since the Devonian period.
smart designs endure through time.
The notion of a living fossil is very attractive to an Art and Design practitioner. The word living brings associations with the fantastical headspace and the hypothetical world of ‘many years ago’. While the word fossil carries connotations of robustness and resilience – species that have overcome unimaginable challenges. In a way, a fossil is nature’s archive of old design ideas.
Darwin first used this term to define organisms with old and fossilised relatives that still resemble some species today. Please notice, the word resemble is important. These organisms are not ‘time capsules’: they still went through a process of adaptation, yet with only minimal, superficial changes.
In this sequence, a living fossil is morphologically robust enough to overcome many challenges and undergo little change. This idea of resilient designs that endure through time is core to this project.
The detail of the red ribbon is the message of the work. It visually traces the amount of time ferns have been around, illustrating in subtext ideas of evolution, resilience, and adaptation.
Process: researching on time, imprint and atlas
– Standing the test of time, organisms that were able to acquire experience and adapt in order to evolve.
– Imprint is a record of time, an image. An imprint can be a fossil archive or the record of a memory into text, for example
– Atlas is the mapping and linking of ideas. It is a “visual form of knowledge” (Millet, 2010). For instance, mapping the continental drift and writing a GTS is putting into one place information that regards time, space, and key events in Earth’s history.
Mapping research
Mapping space
