assembled earthly geometries
Performance of measurements, rural New South Wales. Undocumented.
This process enacts a dialogue between the vastness of celestial space and the intimacy of embodied movement. The soil becomes both canvas and medium, as the steps inscribe a land art drawing informed by the logic of Cartesian geometry but softened by the unpredictability of human perception and agency. Rational abstraction of the star charts, navigating an unbounded environment, creates both limits and unbounded expanse.
The title, Assembled Earthly Geometries, reflects the hybrid nature of the work: a meeting of rational systems and embodied action. By forgoing tools and relying solely on the body, the work dismantles the abstraction of Cartesian space and reframes it as a practice grounded in direct sensory experience. The lines of latitude and longitude, imagined and calculated through touch and sight, highlight the interplay of geometry as both a universal construct and a deeply personal act of interpretation.
The work is also a response to the stark clarity of the desert night sky, an experience increasingly rare in the age of light pollution. In this unpolluted space, the stars become a reminder of humanity’s relationship with the cosmos, a relationship mediated here by the immediacy of the body rather than the precision of instruments. By navigating through hand-measured calculations, the work critiques modern systems of control and accuracy, emphasising instead the power of embodied knowledge and the physicality of spatial awareness. Assembled Earthly Geometries is thus, a meditation on the tension between order and intuition, universality and subjectivity. It invites a rethinking of our relationships with space, questioning the boundaries between scientific rigor and human-scale experience. Through this tactile and temporal engagement with the Earth and sky, the work positions the act of locating oneself as both a practical exercise and an existential reflection on our place in the cosmos.
Assembled Earthly Geometries is a spatial exploration of Cartesian geometry, spatial awareness, and human connection first performed in rural New South Wales, Australia in 2010. Rooted in the methodologies of celestial navigation, the work applies the abstract principles of latitude and longitude into a corporeal act of drawing—one inscribed a vast expanse of a semi-arid zone in New South Wales. Instead of using precise measurement tools, the hand is used as the calculating device, transforming the scientific precision of celestial navigation into an intuitive process.
The work draws on the overwhelming clarity of the night sky, unpolluted by urban light, to map the physical position of the self on Earth using stellar references. The process begins with the observation of the Southern Cross and the South Celestial Pole (SCP). Using hands as measuring instruments, one can gauge the angle between the SCP and the horizon, determining latitude through the proportionality of fingers and spans. Longitude, typically a product of precise timekeeping and celestial events, is instead estimated through observation of the movement of stars relative to the hand over time. The outstretched fingers, palms, and movements become tools for marking time and space, translating the vastness of the cosmos into gestures and measurements that are at once approximate and individual. Once a position is calculated, it is marked in the earth before moving forward across the landscape, guided by an intuitive sense of direction and the starry canopy. At an indeterminate moment, the measuring and marking process is repeated, allowing the rhythm of walking and observing to dictate the creation of points. These positions, connected through movement, form an ephemeral land art drawing—a human-scale geometry traced upon the Earth, tethered to the sky.