South Dunedin sites threatened by sea level rise offer present and forthcoming interplays of water/sediment/life. These settlements form new terrains, upon which the complexity of systems affected by global change can be documented and acknowledged. 

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A compelling aspect of trace fossilisation is its levelling of biotic and abiotic appearances in the fossil record. The tool-marks of twigs dragged along a sandy surface speak with the same mark-making language as the burrowing trails of the wormlike ichnogenus Gyrochorte. 

 

This language of a mark reliant record is explored through observational drawing at the threatened site. Activity at different vertical points of the sample area is observed over set periods of time. Paths of travel, encounters or avoidances, movements in the wind (or of the wind), the eventual settling of disturbed soils: all are equal agents. These initial drawings, made in clay, become negative moulds for recycled paper pulp and charcoal dust. Resultant sheets are layered upon one another to develop a multidimensional archive of the site.  Video documentation of the site's agents are collated with a digital archive of each paper sheet  in the final accretion.

 

The laminations presented are not concerned with concrete data collection, but rather with attention towards complex networks in flux, as they exist now, and in a nearby future.