Roden Crater: Home edition

Abstract

Roden Crater, New Mexico, engages with the phenomenology of light and the celestial sphere. Because such phenomena elude capture by photography, first-hand experience is necessary. However, the project will not be open to the public for years, as artist James Turrell wants to first achieve an overall sense of completion. As a geographer and landscape architect, my fascination with phenomenology and in particular with Roden Crater grew into a series of experiments at a domestic scale, to explore the potential for generating parallel experiences. This paper documents the practice of making 1:1 scale experiments that are based on Roden Crater, and the ways in which phenomena can be amplified and experienced. The experiments transformed my sensation of the sky and the perception of being on a moving planet, acts of defamiliarization and strangemaking that intensify our seeing of place.