Outward Thinking

Time. It guides everything on our planet; plants, animals, seasons, tides, people, etc. When presented with the prompt revolving around the idea of energy flow and transformation through the city I immediately thought of the concept of time. The notion came to me from the exposure to Andy Goldsworthy’s exploration of the environment through his artwork. He spoke of how he and everyone had much to learn about time. This realization hit him because all his work is affected by the environmental time clock. He worked with the tides and the river (water) to complete is artwork. His attunement to nature and her cycles struck me. Nature is not the only entity affected by time the environment keeps, but man and his works are also impacted.
I took the concept of time and applied it to the ideas of energy flow and transformation through the city. It was simple to see the connection between time and transformation but not quite as easy to see the connection of time and energy flow. Over time there is obviously transformation, conclusion easy and simple, however I began to think of how environmental time affected transformation through the city. We as human have an effect on our environment, but as the environment is changing it is also altering our lives. I thought of it in the way of pollution affecting a city over time. As a city grows so does the population and the pollution it outputs. This pollution affects the air, the animal life, plant life, etc. With the air, animal and plant life changing over time we are also affected in turn. Air begins to have a poorer quality, plants die or are not as healthy, animal populations drop; all of which affects the well being and health of humans Even the most selfish person who cares nothing for the environment will care when their health starts to become affected because of the negative transformation of their surroundings.
Not quite so easily was I able to see the connection of time and energy flow. They appeared, at first, to be two completely different ideas. I once again used the environment and analyzed its connecting factor between the two concepts. There is a constant energy flow between humans and their environment; we take resources from the earth, and put resources (most often not good ones) back into it. Over time, energy flowing relationship swing back and forth between the two, like a pendulum; for better or worse. I time of overdrawing the earth resources must come to a close. She has wounds that must be healed and the energy flow must swing back towards her favor. It is through time that the city, ie people, have taken more “energy flow� from the earth/environment, and it is through time we must learn that this taking will only lead to taking that we exhaust our sources.