Earth Morphogenesis: Signs and Interpretations

Abstract

Humans, since their first appearance on earth, act on the terrestrial crust by continuously interpreting and reorganizing the laws of nature. In principle, the operations they carry out are simple, they help to ensure a safe and secure place. In this geographical theatre, where anthropic actions follow one another in time, terrestrial walkways engrave and create hierarchies of the spatial components of this great mosaic. The first to rise are the ridge routes, without natural obstacles, able to guarantee control and safety from attacks, consequently those halfway up the coast with less difficult distances, and finally the valley floor routes mark the transition from nomadism to a stationary condition with a market-type economy. These flows, passing along the distances, connect river and sea routes, generate urban nuclei along the coastline and in the valley floor, connecting knowledge and knowledge with others. The outcome of the transformation process depicts man as the machine of the territory capable of acting on the earth’s crust. In this image of human beings in search of shelter and protection, the archetypes that govern the disciplines of the earth arise: from the way of building to the primitive structures of aggregation. Man, defanging time, undertakes a long journey characterized by multiple actions that observe the past for the future, giving a new meaning to formal relationships between signs, promoting the encounter between semiotics and aesthetics. The analytical line that connects it to modern man, is the use of an endless intellectual reflection on the interpretations of the signs that the physis has transmitted over the centuries. This slow process of transformation gives space to a complex meaning, triggering a continuous cross-reference between sign and drawing. What emerges, is an anthropocentric context, where the anthropic structures are articulated in irreversible forms. The footprints left on the ground, erased and transformed by time are re-read and interpreted with the eyes of other disciplines, investigating whether the resilience of forms and archetypes are present. With the support of cartography, painting and psychoanalysis, we attribute different and possible meanings to the colours of this scenario.