Ossama Ahmed Mohyeldin Elkholy
This proposal speculates how human imposed and natural cycles act on Copinsay Island, and how their intertwined
activity can promote and inform the emergence of new ecologies, and geomorphically reshape its landscape. Assuming landscape as a living process of perpetual change, Copinsay’s life cycle is played out, exploring the impact
of an imposed quarrying processes.
A speculative quarrying tool surveys the island during its excavates, using geological, meteorological, economic,
ecological data to inform its movement and digging; the data was scripted using grasshopper, giving the tool rules on how to respond to the input information, simulating the path, rotation, and sliding movements. The tool always shifted against the wind to created sheltered spaces, the digging area was adjusted on a monthly basis relative to the
changing price of stone, and the simulated depth is informed by the layered geology’s permeability.
As the island is currently the breading grounds for seabirds, the quarrying occurs relative to the bird’s migration
patterns; halted for 6 months every year when the birds occupy Copinsay. During those 6 months, people would
enter the island and slowly carve the stone, responding to what the quarrying tool has cut out.
The project does not take a specific stance on trying to promote either a positive or negative outlook on industrial
processes, but attempts to playout the outcomes of certain “dwelling” processes and its interaction with natural
forces on an existing landscape with a specific ecology.
Rather than assuming the toxicity of such industrial processes as a hinderance, it embraces and speculates how it can allow the emergence of new, strange, unforeseen ecologies. Using the scripted quarrying paths, the deposition of chemicals is slowly traced on the new terrain; trickling down into the crevices, where moss and algae emerges.
Pools of water would also accumulate with precipitation cycles, creating temporal ponds. The proposal speculates
the start of a long perpetual “dwelling” process, where Copinsay
