Man Made
GROUP SIZE: Under 5.4 /sq mile
NATURE OF GROUP: Wyoming Rough Necks, Cow-Hands, & Pilgrims on Dérive
INCIDENCE OF SOCIOMETRY: MAN MADE
For this census MAN MADE across Wyoming
was tagged, mapped & photographed.
All 111 MAN MADE images
Agent Cyberhobos report and route map Typeset Report (printable version)
Download a MAN MADE sticker sheet! Central Wyoming is the least populated part of the continental United States. On a 531 mile foot survey of Wyoming’s continental divide 3 is agents encountered 414 Pronghorn Antelope (and 647 ticks) yet only a handful of man.
Despite a lack of physical presence in the area, humans have scattered the organic landscape with an unfathomable amount of MAN MADE ranging from infrastructure to detritus. Fences, blazes, trails and roads. Gas wells and flight markers. Salt licks and a huge bowl of kibbles. Signs with rotting type. Rust etched garbage melting into the desert.
The infrastructure maintained on the census route often performed a control function. Way finders, harnessers of resources, containers, blockades. Though aesthetically out of context the logic of their place in the landscape was incontrovertible.
Much of the detritus was straight trash, though some of it presumably had a function in the past. (i.e. There were no blatant instances of sculpture.) The harsh environment of central Wyoming continually reclaims any MAN MADE, breaking it down until even its function is eroded. Bereft of a meaningful context abstract forms begin to clutter the natural environment – an exact inversions of weeds growing through cracks in the driveway.
In the depopulated zone along Wyoming’s continental divide, MAN MADE and the organic landscape perform a continual dialectic: the attempt at one way control and the cyclic entropy thwarting it. (See diagram.) Man fills unpopulated space with functional infrastructure and a hidden scatter of debris. Anything unmaintained is either consumed by the harsh environment or takes on a battered sculptural form. By tagging notable MAN MADE, this census aimed to heighten an aesthetic and psychogeographical awareness of our footprint in a place we rarely tread.
Related IS Reports: PaCT & WeDUPT
Tags: Continental Divide Trail, culture jamming, guerilla communication, Guerilla Sociometry, Institute of Sociometry, is, is agent, psychogeography, through hiking, Wyoming