AA Inter 3

Hello!
Sooo,

The project explores the formal transformations of hot lava on a natural landscape. How can we interfere in that transformation? How can we use a destructive phenomenon such as a volcano eruption for potential growth and re-use of the affected land.
When a volcano erupts it immediately transforms the terrain, melting one part and adding material on another. Later on, the lava enriches the soil with minerals, making it fertile and suitable for vegetation. There is a cycle of destruction and creation of life and Japan is a country experiencing that cycle in short time lapses because of its plethora of active volcanoes. How can life find its way within this cycle? How can we control destructive lava flows and cultivate its rich soil?
The proposal works with the volcanic landscape’s different phases. I am proposing a responsive scenario that receives transformation of form as input and responds with further controlled transformation to create new landscape.

At the moment, I am designing a mechanical system that divides a landscape into strips and controls the steepness of these strips. As my previous experiments have indicated, if you carve a pathway into a landscape, the lava will flow into the carving; so with the same principle lava will follow the steeper path. Once the wax/lava will have run on one path/strip, the excess material will be stored in a small container beneath the next strip and in that way will change its weight making the second strip now steeper. In the next “volcanic eruption” the lava will flow on the second strip, then the third and fourth and so on. In that way, the affected areas can be safe from potential threat and their enriched soil can be cultivated.
Sorry for the quality of renders, I am still working out the mechanism and will apply it in a more designed landscape, that will also be the prototype.

So, I am making this model where a heat sensor detects the change of temperature when the wax hits the surface and activates a servo motor to move some obstacles on the surface and in that way create voids, that can be traced. The idea is to study how one can intervene to the change of landscape that lava causes, and this is sort of the first take. Further experiment pictures will be posted soon as the model is nearly done and tomorrow I will test the arduino code and see what I get of it.

I don’t know why it looks pink on the image file, its normal on the pdf… Here:
wax experiment diagrams

This experiment is to show how through the burst of lava, either overground or underwater, earth’s landscape is transformed. This process is opposite to the earthquakes or tsunami’s destruction, as ground is eventually building up. Below you can see the different forms the “lava” took when in contact with ground, water and ice.
For this experiment the substitute of lava was paraffin wax, as it is as well a thixotropic material, and sand was used for ground. Water and ice, as themselves.

P.S.: There are also videos on the way. And sorry for the delay, my computer was entertaining me by crushing again..

woow!