Shadow Scapes - Salar de Uyuni

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

SHADOWSCAPES: In the beginning the earth was without form and void. All things appeared undifferentiated. There was no orientation and order in the emptiness of the desert. One day two machines start to generate a time-spacesystem along the main travel paths of the desert.

Shadows are phenomenon's: they appear and change their shape with every moment, grow, and shrink again until they disappear.
The time-space-system has the same behaviour as the shadows:
It is an orientation system out of ephemeral, changing shadows, which gets closer and more distant to the travel routes or completely disappears in the silence of the desert. The orientation system is changing according to daily and annual rhythms.
In the morning a different part is active than in the evening – at noon the system disappears in the glowing heat. The orientation in and throughout the desert is changing with the interrelation of the shadowscapes and the moving sun. Nearness and distance generate a shifting of perception: that, what is connected in the distance, decays in the close-up.

The distant system appears flickering through the shifting density of the shadows and the extreme reflection of the white salt.
The time-space-system is not generating specific architecture; it is creating a strategy for an architectural-graphical score (Partitur). It is a strategy, which is per se open and coincidental. The system creates chaotic and non-linear traces, which follow specific parameters.

The system is defined by following parameters:

1. the rhythm of the traces: 5000m radius of perception along every path
2. the rhythm of two interrelated machines: the machines approach to eachother not more than 30 m and stay in long range of 500 m. they cartographed and rasterized the desert, get always plotting of their position.
3. the rhythm of the machine: the machine is interrelated to the visitor, a disturbance causes a change of direction – perpendicular to the current position of the sun.

The orientation is never the same, with every cycle and the permanent eroding of the old traces the system generates new paths through the desert. There is also always a secondary system of the human traces in and around the system.

The orientation system reacts to the different users of the desert:
On the hand there is the commercial user, who needs to cross the desert as inhabitant of the region, on the other hand the racer, which uses the speeding opportunities of the even, flat desert. Further there is the adventurer and the natural scientist or nature enthusiastic tourist. All these people have different speeds, different targets and different levels of perception: they experience the system in multiple ways.

The machines are moving rhythmically over the white plain, leaving traces – influenced of sun cycle and visitors. Every little while they leave cleaned salt piles ready for collection - as results of the digged traces. During the night, when the desert is covered in darkness, the machines enlighten as orientation marks and unfold themselves to collect water out of the fog.

CREDITS:

PROGRAM:          an architectural score

CLIENT:                N/A

CONSULTANTS:   N/A