2024
Edition of 26
Ostracod Rising tells the story of Earth’s past from 104 million years in the future. Beginning with the formation of Earth in the Hadean Eon, each page factually describes a distinct period of time throughout the ages. It then moves from our current Holocene into an imaginary yet highly plausible future consisting of the Anthropocene, Benthoscene, Silerecene, and finally the Ostracocene.
Each page’s timeline covers the emergence and extinction of species, changes in atmosphere and climate, geologic and oceanic events, and the occasional asteroid collision. Large watercolor images of small creatures dominate each page, alongside other elements including day length, atmospheric content, continental drift, and the distance to our slowly receding moon.
A portfolio of book board is bound with luxurious Japanese Asahi book cloth in deep eggplant. An inner 4-flap wrapper holds the book. The wrapper is of heavy Asuka washi, printed with drawings of single-celled organisms. Lokta paper completes the inner lining of the portfolio.
from the colophon:
Ostracod Rising was originally produced as an installation for Future Tense at the Beall Center for Art + Technology, part of Getty’s 2024 Pacific Standard Time Art: Art & Science Collide. Thank you to both the Beall and Getty for support. Thank you also to Charon Vilnai and Steve Wight for editing, and to Rhiannon Alpers for problem-solving. Thank you to Allison Stegner, Elizabeth Hadley, Tony Barnosky, and Jasper Ridge at Stanford University for inspiration and for my first deep-time introduction to the extraordinary, ubiquitous, and full-of-possibilities ostracod.
This edition of Ostracod Rising is pigment printed on Hiromi asuka papers and bound with Awagami moenkopi unryu. Text is in Broadway and Cochin. Portfolio is bound in Asahi bookcloth, and lined with lokta. Wrapper is Hiromi asuka with drawings of single-celled organisms. The double accordion Japanese-style binding keeps the recto and verso separate from each other, bound only at the folds.
- Archival pigment prints
- Accordion bound with printed washi
- Housed in a portfolio with interior wrapper
- 26 pages
- 21.75” x 16.25” x 1” (approx. 34′ fully extended)
- $3000 purchase