MARI AMMAN, Pozzolana

The proposal developed from 2023 onward and is protected by BONO and international copyright laws.

Saltwater Fortifies earthen ash.

Art informed by Roman Concrete research.

The solution for humanities challenges now and in the future are often found by carefully examining history. In my artistic work I study patterns in nature, distances in viewing, while working with the poetics of space to develop relationships through composition, described as ‘sublime timescapes’ and ‘aesthetic resonances’ to cultivate and preserve geological empathy.

I hereby propose artistic research of Pozzolana with the American Academy in Rome. As a fact-based source of discernment, researching Roman Concrete throughout history and site-specific study will be used to inform the development of contemporary artwork.

Drawing upon longstanding interests in technology, geology, water, creating in harmony with nature through built environments, the rheology of earth over time and ingenious use of earth sediment serves an obvious significance to understanding design longevity, include the enduring 8, 5 to 13 meters depth, underwater sites. The Berkeley Lab News Center suggests Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions (lbl.gov). The resulting artwork’s conceptual focus shall look into notions enduring the test of time to improve sustainability and healthy ecological goals.

The work can reside with the framework of Land-art “mark making” viewable by air, a sculpture significant to contermpoary 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 in the study of nuanced differences in environmental interactivity between the chemistry. I also look to study and work with the ways pozzolana affords spacial, visual, acoustical, and design purposes. Publishing research, photographs and records from site-specific investigations to the caves, cisterns, and 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, among others in music, dance, and architecture.

Roman Concrete interests me personally due to the way it becomes over time. Where 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 a contemporaneous technocracy due to examining 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 in 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 artist 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 the technology, geology, archeology, architecture and built environments. The study of Roman Concrete aligns with the way water and earth materials interact. The fundamental concepts in properly understanding nature, in my eyes, become metaphorically apparent in social constructions. In this way the affect and actuality of constructions may offer beneficial cultural relational activity between Nordics, Italy, and Americas, with potential to extend throughout Asia and Europe. Additional partnerships can be considered, such as the Enel Foundation, Norges Geologiske Undersøkelse and other Geoscience organisations.

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.

Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions – Berkeley Lab News Center (lbl.gov)

The fate of volcanic ash: premature or delayed sedimentation? Supplementary information (Nature Communications)

The Society of Rheology: Roman Concrete study

Journal of the American Ceramic Society – 2021 – Seymour – Reactive binder and aggregate interfacial zones in the mortar of Tomb of Caecilia Metella concrete, 1C BCE, Rome

Roman Noblewoman’s Tomb Reveals Secrets of Ancient Concrete Resilience: Study shows how changing chemistry in Roman mortar strengthens the tomb over time (Paul Gabrielsen)

Surtsy Volcano Research, University of Utah

2018 Jackson ACERS Feature Jun-Jul18

2014 AJA Program Abstracts Surtsey

2009 Jackson etal JAS

2006 Jackson & Marra

The Fate of Volcanic Ash

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)

The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

Gesammelte Nachrichten von dem in den vereinigten Niederländschen Provinzen gebraüchlichen Cemente aus Trasse, oder gemahlnen Cöllnschen und Andernachschen Tuffsteine. In dreyen Sendschreiben … mitgetheilet von*Google Play

“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

Sublime Timescapes Exposures, 2018	The Field’s Project, 1999
Over a Streambed A Body Formed In the Light Refracted Waves	Byron Generating Station

	Native American Sculpture, Lowden State Park, Illinois

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.

Vocalization inside Vigeland’s Mausoleum

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