Karen M'Closkey

My work in Rome is part of a forthcoming book, co-authored with Keith VanDerSys, titled Dynamic Patterns: Visualizing Landscapes in a Digital Age (Routledge). Our book explores projects and techniques that enable a multivalent, multilayered understanding of pattern as both expression and shaping influence of environmental processes. More specifically, we examine the centrality of pattern with respect to two predominant paradigms that characterize our age: ecology (i.e.: landscape processes and functions) and information (the way these processes are conveyed conceptually, materially, and perceptually). The book is organized in three sections that address this affiliation in distinct ways: “Computational Patterns;” “Behavioral Patterns;” and “Ornamental Patterns.” Inherent to these topics is the role of recent media (e.g. the expansion of digital software and the accessibility of geospatial technologies) in facilitating new forms of pattern. Utilizing a selection of work from varied design practices, including our own, Dynamic Patterns examines how these tools and techniques have facilitated new ways of seeing and designing and, therefore, new ways of understanding landscapes and our place within them. Patterns – which are formal, material, and temporal recurrences – are essential to perception and can contribute to this understanding.