The Earth Sciences and Creative Practice

Artists who engage with the earth sciences have been able to explore all kinds of information about the natural environment, including information about the atmosphere, extremes of physical formations across immense dimensions of time and space, and increasingly ‘invisible’ realms of materials at the nanoscale. This is a rich area for identifying the relationship between digital and material cultures as many artists working with this subject are crossing boundaries and testing out the liminal spaces between the virtual and the real. After an overview of theoretical links between visualisation and geology, mineralogy and crystallography, this chapter explores four themes: (1) environment and experience, (2) code and pattern, (3) co-creation and participation, and (4) mining heritage.