Time and the Breathing City

The Dorset and East Devon Coast, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Jurassic Coastline,' offers a unique lens to study geological time through its Portland stone quarry. This site serves as a 'time interface' in two distinct ways: it showcases the collision of an equatorial marine rock formation with local sedimentary rocks, altering erosion patterns and shaping the coastline; and it reveals a vertical slice through layered Portland stone, encoding alternating periods of forestation and shoreline formation. A multidisciplinary team, including a meteorologist, composer, and artist, explored these features to investigate complex systems in atmospheric science, material evidence, data, and embodied cognition. Their approach combined field observations with conceptual exploration, aiming to bridge scientific understanding with artistic interpretation.

Rose, C. (2012). Time and the Breathing City. Making the Geologic Now, 170–172. https://doi.org/10.21983/p3.0014.1.28