sALTWATER FORTIFIES EARTHEN ASH
The proposal developed from 2023 onward and is protected by BONO and international copyright laws. This page is not optimized for mobile viewing. Please refer to the PDF or view this page on a computer. Contact with your interest or support: mariammanart@icloud.com
Artistic research informed by Roman Concrete exposes ways humanity can sustainably work with nature within society and built environments, instead of in domination of nature.
Solutions to humanity’s challenges, now and in the future, can be found by carefully examining history. In my artistic research I study origins, patterns in nature, and distances in viewing, while working on the poetics of space to develop relationships in composition. These visual and installation artworks have been described as ‘sublime timescapes’ and ‘aesthetic resonances’ motivated by the desire to cultivate and preserve Geological Empathy.
Looking at ways the imaginary realm becomes real, recovering the wisdom in Roman concrete serves as a multi-layered metaphor, by studying enduring forces. The truly beautiful can be evaluated as that which withstands time. The work could potentially reside in the framework of visual art, multi-media and performance art, and land-art “mark making” viewable by air, a sculpture significant to praxis o contemporary symbology (potential referenced by monoliths such as Easter Island), a mosaic or façade pigmented with relevant meaningful design, an installation by applied use of photogrammetry, pattern development, and/or displaying the results of ongoing research the study of nuanced differences in environmental interactivity between the chemistry. By studying and working with the ways pozzolana affords spacial, visual, acoustical, and design purpose, I can consider the ways water, as the central force of life, and breathing of the earth through tectonic movements and radiation prevails, at least until Earth’s next biggest the next impact. Therefore, the study of forces must be considered related to harmony and dominance through reverence for the past to apply deeper understanding and grace toward the future.
Artistic research of Pozzolana with the American Academy in Rome, serves as a fact-based source of discernment. Researching Roman Concrete throughout history and site-specific studies will be used to inform the development of artwork fusing tradition and technology. The poetic and metaphorical understandings arising from the anthropological and anthropogenic Roman Concrete research involves fundamental forces of life elements, in particular water, earth, and air to develop upon the 25+ years multidisciplinary praxis involving land-art, analogue photography, imaging, dance, sculpture, textile, and multimedia installation. Drawing upon my longstanding interests in technology, geology, water, creating in harmony with nature through built environments, the rheology of the earth over time and ingenious use of earth sediment serve as significance to establishing knowledge and the discernment between intelligence and hapless disregard. By taking into account design longevity, including the endurance of 8, 5 to 13 meters depth studies of underwater sites, I can apply my background in interior architecture, photography, performance, and the concept of the Eternal fore-fronting biological research relative to transitions in built environments, and narratives of life on earth with attention to magnetic resonances stored in stones leading to filling in the gaps in our understanding of earth’s history relative to human activity. For example, the Berkeley Lab News Center suggests Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions (lbl.gov). The resulting artwork’s conceptual focus will look into notions enduring the test of time to improve sustainability and healthy ecological goals.
Roman Concrete interests me personally due to the way it becomes over time. When in contact with seawater, the form and structure of Roman concrete becomes more stable. The opposite occurs for Modern Concrete, eroding over time with prolonged exposure to seawater. This is a site of precise, material reality that can be related to philosophy in practice. Building metaphors and myths rooted in reality is of critical importance in contemporaneous technocracy for examining and revealing faulty logic. “Young” Roman Concrete needs time to develop strength from seawater and the elements and was deemed to not have the compressive strength to handle modern use. The folly in the logic is revealed in the application of Modern Concrete withering in time with cracking requiring continual structural maintenance to be preserved, such as in Lorado Taft’s Eternal Indian statue in Oregon, Illinois. The material distinctions between Roman and Modern Concrete are also to be looked at through formal structural research. For example, the Nuclear Generating Station (Byron, Illinois) cooling towers. FERMILAB (DeKalb, Illinois), and CERN, and a great number of commercial, industrial, architectural, transportation, civil engineering, resource and waste methods to be researched.
My personal ethos is that facts generate healthier creations than ideas alone, and therefore have rooted my multidisciplinary artistic practice in ongoing skill development in visual arts and design, photography (analogue/darkroom/digital), installations, music, writing and poetry, sculpture (clay, stone, mixed media materials). My educational background involves interior architecture, communications, social psychology, personal study of human behavior and biology, rooted in my upbringing near forests, prairie preserves, nuclear power generation, alongside ongoing interests in technology, geology, archeology, architecture and built environments. The study of Roman Concrete aligns with the way water and earth materials interact. The fundamental concepts of properly understanding nature, in my eyes, become metaphorically apparent in social constructions. In this way, the effects and actuality of construction may offer beneficial cultural relational activity between the Nordics, Italy, and the Americas, with the potential to extend throughout Asia and Europe. Additional partnerships can be considered, such as the Enel Foundation, Norges Geologiske Undersøkelse and other Geoscience organisations.
Pozzolana (working title) aims to look at knowing as a concretization of intuition, pursued and developed to recover lost knowledge, to then examine ways of introducing meaning into the public through art and cultural work. Publishing research, photographs and records from site-specific investigations into the caves, cisterns, and the potential of transversing the Appian Way can generate an ongoing artistic production related to Roman Concrete by creating images (still and moving), sound and performance with dance and vocalisation. These proposals are based on my artistic work influenced by Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Kimsooja, Jennifer Steinkamp, Robert Smithson, James Turrell, Olafur Eliasson, Gerhard Richter, Tricia Brown, among others in music, dance, and architecture.
“Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.” — Thomas Sowell
Bibliography (to be continued, copyright remains with the publications)
Marie D. Jackson, Research at Utah: Geology and Geophysics
Excerpt from “Miracle Materials Episode 1: From Concrete to Clay” from Advanced Light Source on Vimeo.
The Fate of Volcanic Ash: Premature or Delayed Sedimentation? Supplementary Information (Nature Communications)
The Society of Rheology: Roman Concrete study
Surtsy Volcano Research, University of Utah
2018 Jackson ACERS Feature Jun-Jul18
2014 AJA Program Abstracts Surtsey
Chemistry of coal combustion products (wiki)
AHO, Toxic Beauty: Visualizing and Transposing the Waste Landscape of Langøya by Jhu Yin Hong
Magnetic Resonance Research Project
(Possuolana, Tufa/Tuff)
Sinuessa lantica città scomparsa vicino Mondragone, 2020, Federico Quagliuolo
The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard
A 2,000-year-old Roman Concrete dam Aragon helped to prevent flooding in a nearby town in Spain
Special thanks to Francesco Bentivegna; Vincenzo Capicchiano, Architect; Marie D. Jackson, PhD.
Previous works, editorial, photography of Roman Concrete in Rome and Pozzuoli, additional thoughts on the project:
|
|
The Field’s Project, 1999
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 Lorado Taft Unveiling |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Vocalization in Vigeland’s Mausoleum
That which is often right in front of us becomes an eloquent and sustainable generator. As the way the ruins of Rome stand with us today, often overlooked through cultural tourism, a deeper dive through history and cultivating an understanding of the distinction and nuance of the fact of its existence can result in enduring (sustainable) decisions for creating art and civil projects.
As a sketch for the sound composition is to resource my background in singing and piano, as well musical colleagues I’ve collaborated with in the past for Stop Bath, La Mer, By Still Waters. I propose creating a soundtrack for a multi-media spacial-experiential exhibition. By translating stories of Roman Concrete, seawater, and earth sites, and the visible human marks on the earth, visible underwater, from space, and certainly throughout time, the resonances can tell stories to inform the future generations to come.
For example, the signals from earth’s magnetic field interacting with the cosmic radiation and solar storms the European Space Agency’s ESA Swarm satellites records can be considered as material to work with sound. This is the way frequencies resonate off long distance, such as the way underwater sea creatures find their way through depths. By tuning into these soundscapes, the voice of the sites and forms made becomes discernible through the aid of research, data analysis, and creating a song. This layer of the potential artistic research outcome is inspired by Sonic Restoration by researchers, Jake M. Robinson, Christian Cando-Dumancela, and Martin F. Breed, at Flinders University. In the way translations of the earth’s electromagnetic force fields protecting the earth sound eery when heard in raw format, the sound of that which can endure time can be exposed. The initial layer of development began during a field research trip to the kobalt caves at Blaafargeverket, in Telemark, Norway, 2018. Further research and inspiration was gathered during the Kjerringøy Land Art residency in 2020, and developing Aesthetic Resonances artistic research project. Invigorating magnetic resonance data with artistic research, utilising Pattern Recognition, spacial-audible understandings of constructive life choices on earth add a layer to the spacial-temporal exhibition. While recognizing unknowns, such as the Devonian period, in contrast to known variables, the research findings aim to create soundscape for viewers to temporally experience a meaningful relationship with ephemeral messages to aid humanity in re-imagining beautiful and benevolent futures.
Magnetic Signals Battle With a Solar Storm
2006, Ernst Reijseger, Album: Requiem for a Dying Planet (Music for Two Films by Werner Herzog: The White Diamond and the Wild Blue Yonder)
Recorded at Yellow Cab Studios, Paris, France, June 12,13, 2004
Bauer Studios Ludwigsburg, October 10, 2004
Fluxx Tonnstudio, Münich, March 12, 2006
Mola Sylla, vocals, m’bira, xalam
Voches de Sardinna: Tenore e cuncordu de Orosei:
Patricio Mura, voche
Gianluca Frau, voche e contra
Mario Siotto, bassu
Piero Pala, voche e mesovoche
Massimo Roych, voche e mezzovoche
A result of a fortuitous collaboration between German filmmaker Werner Herzog and Dutch avant-garde cellist Ernst Reijseger, Requiem for a Dying Planet is an autonomous album created from score recordings, remixed by Reijseger and producer Stefan Winter, of the Herzog films The Wild Blue Yonger and The White Diamond. Combining Reijseger’s formidable skills in the grey regions between jazz, improvised, and chamber music, with the mesmerizing vocal talents of Senegalese singer Mola Sylla and Sardinian vocal choir Voches de Sardinna, the album covers an extraordinarily wide range of moods and textures, from vaguely liturgical atmospheres to threatening drones to delicate percussive vignettes–eliciting a mysterious aura contemplative of planet Earth’s hereafter.
Lyrics:
Thank you, Lord
Dank sei Dir, Herr
Thank you, Lord
Dank sei Dir, Herr
You have led your people with you
Du hast Dein Volk mit Dir geführt
Israel across the sea
Israel hindurch das Meer
It passed through like a herd
Wie eine Herde zog es hindurch
Lord, your hand protected it
Herr Deine Hand schützte es
In your goodness you gave him salvation
In Deiner Güte gabst Du ihm Heil
Thank you, Lord
Dank sei Dir, Herr
Thank you, Lord
Dank sei Dir, Herr
You have led your people with you
Du hast Dein Volk mit Dir geführt
Israel across the sea
Israel hindurch das Meer
Potential Software Resources For Visualizations
Goldspot LithoLens, Datarock, Driver AI, Spacial, OreFox, RadiXplore
Images of Norwegian Geological Formations by Mari Amman, including Blaafarageværket (Telemark), Trøndelag, Oslo, Lofoten Regions
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
