Morphogenic City #1, 2012
Using Alan Turing's 1952 paper on morphogenisis I started to think about how cities, towns, villages and hamlets are organized as patterns. What is it about human habitation that may behave more like a larger organism within a larger framework of geological features, economic pressures or policy decisions that help to shape its visual manifestation? At the same time I am considering how this may relate to ideas from genetics concerning epigenetics. Epigenetics is a field that investigates heritable alterations in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in DNA sequence. For the human habitation this would include climate pressures acting on it or even something as subtle as sonic disturbances. The city may also be reconfigured through historical memory, spaces and places of habitation may morph into locations for gentrification based on land values or the historical narratives that shape and define a place. Certainly crime-rates have a bearing on whether or not a city applies services or capital to build infrastructure. Even the natural barriers as seen in this photograph become a natural growth boundary along waterfronts and littoral zones.
Morphogenic City #2, 2012
In these works the electrical grids predominate, showing not only power usage but the ways in which light is distributed and patterns emerge. Of course here too is the act of looking down to survey something having its own connections to the critiques of surveillance that is now worldwide through satellite surveillance. All of this has its own narrative in terms of shaping the discipline of mapping and city planning.
