Scientized Erosion is the three artwork from the series Topographic Report of Synthetic Horizon. The work focuses on tafoni, the honeycomb-like cavities that appear in granular rock, and treats them as evidence of a slow, distributed intelligence. Tafoni formations do not arrive through a single decisive cut. They emerge through negotiation: between shade and heat, dryness and condensation, dissolution and crystallization.

The piece is built around that paradox. The work frames erosion as a generative language that organizes matter from the inside out. What you encounter is a landscape that seems to self edit: expanding where conditions allow, holding where limits are reached, stabilizing only by continuously adjusting.

In this way, Sintized Erosion operates as both artwork and instrument: a controlled environment where erosion is not depicted, but performed as a set of interacting rules. The output is a world in which climate is translated into morphology, and morphology becomes a readable trace of the forces that continuously remake it.

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Tifoni in nature are distinctive, smooth, rounded, honeycomb-like cavities and pits that form in granular rocks like sandstone or granite through accelerated weathering, often in arid or coastal areas. Technically, the work does not attempt to reproduce a specific cliff face. Instead, it reconstructs the logic of tafoni formation through a simplified simulation.

The system models feedback driven growth: an initial cavity produces shade, shade cools the local air, moisture concentrates on interior surfaces, salts accumulate and crystallize, and material weakens and recedes. Growth can reinforce itself, but it is constrained by neighboring structure, so cavities expand only as far as the surrounding material permits. Over time, pits widen, merge, stall, and reopen as local conditions shift, producing patterns that appear coherent precisely because they are dynamically balanced.

Credits

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Project developed as part of the Mazra’ah Media Arts Residency 2025

Project Coordinator Tegan Bristow

Exhibition space Diriyah art futures KSA

Development - InDialog

Production assistant Abdullah Al Minawi.

Production director - Gavan Eckhart

Fab Lab Specialists : Issa Chebaro & Aisha Alshehri