Land Actuator

The land actuator is an ongoing process not a fixed form, co-writing stories each day, each season, each year. It begins with the planting of bamboo grown on a land formed of stories, past and present. The land is then paced and marked. Voids are carved from its surface, the rich earth formed into bricks set out to cure in the heat of the sun. Cisterns and vaults formed of the bricks rise into being, reaching out into the landscape as they narrow into fine channels. The remaining earth shelters the vaults, as local grasses and wildflowers are reseeded within it. Positive and negative landforms folded into the land to offer moments of pause in an ever-flowing landscape, tempering storms and offering shelter.

Bamboo nurtured by sun and rain is cut and crafted into elegant cradles under the shade of the trees using time honed skills. Adults teaching children, who in turn will teach their children. The bamboo cradles are carefully carried to the landforms and hoisted into place.

A boat docks, brass environmental instruments with glass photovoltaic fins glint in the sunshine as they are carried to the landforms to be strung and tuned. The land actuator comes into being to co-author new stories. Stories of sheltering within the vaults in a cyclone, of cisterns filling with water and negative landforms offering themselves as lakes to mitigate the deluge. Stories of times when the rain does not come and the cisterns offer fresh water, and of dark pathways lit by the harvested power of the sun. Stories of community meetings and school lessons held under the shade of bamboo photovoltaic cradles within the cool breezes encouraged by the form. Stories of tending and harvesting crops sheltered by the semi-transparent photovoltaics and watered by collected rain and fog. Daily stories becoming rituals as the land actuator tunes itself to the time of the place, reaching up to capture the morning mists to then sparkle with water droplets in the sunshine, then pivoting to catch the rays of the sun, closing down in a storm and sending out cooling mists when a tipping point is reached and temperatures become extreme. Tales of burnt land and cracked earth sent into the sky, a distress call to engender action.

Bamboo is replanted, offering shelter to the sea breezes, as the cycle of the land actuator continues through repair and replacement. A story of co-creation, of people, of land, of sky.