Austin Houldsworth graduated from the Royal College of Arts with an MA in Design interaction; having previously studied Interactive Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University.
He strives to create solutions to the problems that are often neglected by industry; sometimes ‘fixing’ thing’s which physically speaking, are not ‘broken’.
A 4m-tall prototype ‘Fossilisation Machine’ commissioned for the 2010 Tatton Park Biennial, built to produce a fossil from one of the estate’s glasshouse-grown pineapples.
The machine attempts to emulate the natural process of petrification; 2500 litres of water become highly mineralised as they flow through calcium rich limestone, the public contribute to the process by pumping this water to the header tank, which then flows over the Pineapple and slowly transforms the organic matter into stone.
Interview about the project:
www.we-make-money-not-art.com
Results from the machine:
www.we-make-money-not-art.com
Fossils are like books written by the hand of our planet millions of years in the past. They allow a glimpse into long-lost worlds offering insights and charging the imagination with images of what once roamed our planet. Unfortunately human control over the natural environment has, in most places, taken away the natural potential for the creation of a fossil; burials create the perfect environment for decay and its unlikely that human remains will last.