Petriverse Platforms (Intro 4)
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2019-03-08T19:28:59+00:00
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The Petriverse is designed to catch viewers' attention, to cultivate aesthetic appreciation for stone and the wonders of Earth. Pierre Jardin pursues this purpose by propagating the Petriverse in lithic, digital and print media. A large, square, flat mudstone serves as a plaque that bears the garden's name, with a rock in which a purple portrait of Pierre Jardin's Munch-like melting face may be made out.
A "Manifestone" broadcasts the garden's ethos: "Stones are vital signs/ of the earth's living spirit/ plus they're pretty cool." Jardin casts stones as the planet's pulse and breath, while obliquely echoing Emerson's Nature: "Words are signs of natural facts; Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts; Nature is the symbol of spirit."
Large stones spray-painted roadsign-yellow inform pedestrians that they are passing through a "SLOW TIME ZONE." Slow Time has two synergistic tenets: in psychological terms, slow time means a duration during which a single cognitive focus is sustained (i.e., not switching attention); in physical terms, slow time refers to geologic or cosmic timescales. The Petriverse invites strollers to pause and refresh, to contemplate stones and their aeonic timespans.
An eponymous blog features photos and writings about Petriverse displays, while also providing a platform Pierre Jardin to disseminate his research and thoughts about stone more generally. A stone face with a speech balloon-shaped stone says "READ ME" and shows a QR code that allows garden visitors to use their phones to access the blog and read about the garden. Particularly interesting developments in the garden are chronicled in a newsletter called The Slow Times, made available in print (document box in garden) and on the Petriverse blog.
