Continuum

Continuum is taken from Carbon Synthesis (2020-ongoing): a practice-led trans-disciplinary collaboration, between Dr Sarah Robinson, Dr Donna Franklin and Tracy Hill, which examines deep time and its human/non-human connection through carbon. Καιρός (Kairos) is a Greek word meaning Time (Ancient Greek) and Weather (Modern Greek) specific to surroundings and revealed in fleeting experiences. As global climatic systems reach tipping points, how much can the chemistry in the air and below the surface tell us about climate conditions? Conversational exchanges inform creative responses, inviting encounters to reimagine and challenge existing notions of climate change. 

During 2021 Hill undertook a years residency on Little Woolden Moss, a SSSI site on the outskirts of Manchester. During the years residency Hill examined how the attention given to the land underfoot informed and expanded thinking and making, walking and pausing, seeing and listening. Listening above and below the water, recording the colour of wetland pools and physical movements of the land as the bog breathed. 

Echoing early records of botanical specimens, cyanotypes are a traditional medium for recording our natural world through the colour Blue.  Using cyanotypes to record the UV rhythms,  pre-prepared paper was submerged in watertight pouches into the sphagnum pools overnight with the ambition to capture the reflected UV from the moon producing the view from below the waterline, revealing the language of the moss itself. 

Hill recorded UV exposures every new and full moon cycle for the entire year, the resulting collection of images revealing not only UV strength but Moss growth, hydrology levels and water temperature. 

 ‘Continuum’ charts and maps invisible connections through time and chemical exchanges.  It is also a map of Hill’s pandemic year, 11 exposures because for one of the months the Hill family was isolating due to covid.