This interdisciplinary presentation combines perspectives from earth sciences and art-as-research to examine how human activities are producing novel geological materials that challenge traditional taxonomic distinctions between "natural" and "anthropogenic" substances. As humans modify Earth's surface through urban development, waste disposal, and landfill creation, we influence the sedimentary environment. Future stratigraphers may analyze layers of weathered asphalt and concrete or sedimentary rocks interlayed with plastic debris; the proposed name for the latter is “plastiglomerate” (Corcoran et al 2014). It is now necessary to understand how these materials will be reflected in the geologic record. 

We have analyzed a series of hybrid rocks collected from industrial sites, abandoned factories, and former waste incinerators, including mixed waste asphalt and concrete melded with building detritus from Troy, NY and melted iron and sediment aggregates from a historic landfill in Queens, NY. Our petrographic analysis generated photomicrographs and microstructural data from thin sections, which will be uploaded into StraboMicro and linked to field locations. Mineralogic composition will be characterized using Raman Spectroscopy. 

Art-as-research frameworks suggest that art practice is a form of research distinct from the methodologies of science, and generates alternative forms of knowledge. Art inquiries informed by geologic sciences serve as a means for exploring new research questions, generating insights, and producing knowledge that may not be accessible through traditional academic research methods. The epistemic impact of art practice, when it is sited in the university as research, is that it can create "a sensibility and approach attentive to how form makes worlds" (Loveless 2019) and can potentially attend to the creation of different forms of sociopolitical responsibility. Our preliminary petrographic and geochemical data establishes a foundation for ongoing temperature and pressure experiments to assess whether future geologists will be able to distinguish hybrid rocks from geological rocks.

Corcoran, P.L., Moore, C.J. & Jazvac, K. (2014) An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record. GSA today 24(6), pp. 4-8.

Loveless, N. (2019) How to make art at the end of the world: A manifesto for research-creation. Durham: Duke University Press.