This project examines the history of oil extraction in the state of Oklahoma through the expression of a physical form that directly represents energy expansion across the state through years of incessant growth starting in 1945 and continuing to the present.

Driven by python coding and data fabrication research, this piece in envisioned to exist as a physical installation with specific functional and aesthetic properties. Internally a substrate is formed (gallery images in red) through the connections of drilling locations and their respective operators over time. The outer form emerges by following the outermost drilling locations across the state. This two part system forms an elongated tube-like shell that encases a matrix of interwoven, entangled lines.

Culturally this piece is designed to incite a dialogue and increase community awareness around groundwater infiltration, contamination and the danger of over consumption and unchecked growth.

Aesthetically, a grotesque form emerges from the pure drilling data – a sinuous extrusion of tangled connections and a tense, stretched shell opens to its own future timeline with a gaping maw.

Functionally the goal of this piece is to act as a filtration mechanism. The large surface area created throughout the internal matrix and the long vertical solar absorptive outer shell (pipe) will move polluted air using simple convection from the bottom through the internal filtration matrix and out of the top. The main objective of the piece is to collect pollution particulates upon the surfaces of the inner matrix and hold these particles until a rain event, whereby the toxic particles are then washed through the object’s reverse timeline to infiltrate to the bottom of the piece, leaving an ever darkening and deepening stain upon and into the earth below.