Literature Review 1 // Richard Coyne, "The Book of Stones"

Coyne, Richard. “The Book of Stones.” Essay. In Network Nature: The Place of Nature in the Digital Age, 77–93. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

---

In the chapter “The Book of Stones”, Richard Coyne, a professor of Architectural Computing at the University of Edinburgh, argues that along with living biological entities, abiotic and geological systems should be considered as “a major component of communicative commerce with and through nature.”[1] In examining the field of geology as a language system and the ways in which humanity connects to geological materials and landscapes, Coyne poses the idea of abiotic agency and the possibility of communication amongst non-living entities. The chapter discusses themes around: abiotic influence, human-geological relationships, and the Anthropocene, and refers to post-humanist theories of Jamie Davies, Victor R. Baker and Bronislaw Szerszynski.

Coyne opens by reiterating his overarching theme in the book: that communication in the natural world takes place “independently of and before human language.”[2] Referring to the work of geologist Victor R. Baker, Coyne introduces the concept of geosemiotics – the theory that semiotic language exists not only between biological entities in nature, but between humans and non-living elements of the natural world. To Baker, humans are “part of a semiotic web [in] which things and objects interweave to make up the fabric of experience”,[3] and this web can be explored via the tools and practices of geological study. Geosemiotics expands on the concept of biosemiotics – a theory of interconnection between all living beings in a complex web of existence[4] - by recognising non-living entities as an active part of nature’s semiotic network. Geological artefacts, Baker argues, are a form of text that can be read.

Exploring the idea of geological communication further, Coyne discusses the work of performance artist Maria Fusco, whose audio-visual piece Master Rock (2015) centres around the Ben Cruachan hydroelectric power station in Scotland. Fusco’s work (figure 1) combines three human voices with sounds recorded from the station’s operating turbine hall, in part personifying the voice of the 450-million-year-old granite upon which the station is built. The ability for this work and others in creative fields to explore the presence of such structures, Coyne suggests, is evident of a deeply felt sense of connection with geological spaces that transcends logic and everyday human perception.

The concept of geology as text is expanded upon through the introduction of sociologist Bronislaw Szerszynski work. He compares geological artefacts with bookmarks in a text:

A book in your library is made up semiotically of ‘sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and parts’. The book of geology is also ‘divided into nesting material wholes – stages, series, systems… [The] material structure of the earth corresponds with its semiotic structure, ‘since each unit of time-rock can be read to reveal corresponding nesting periods of rock-time… each divided by moments of dramatic change in the Earth system’… Geology tells a story…and the story is not yet over.[5]

In conceptualising the geological world as a book, each element of its topography, atmosphere, minerality and so on may be seen as a section, chapter, or element of a vast and ongoing text – one of many in a complex, interconnected web of communication that we are a part of. While these ideas outline methods of geological communication between humanity and abiotic systems – defined as the physical conditions and non-living resources that affect living organisms -, Coyne stresses that communication also takes place between abiotic entities without human participation. [6] This can be seen various ways, for example the influence of seismic activity on tidal zones or the shifting of earth due to rainfall.

In thinking of geological artefacts as bookmarks in a text, Coyne refers to the work of experimental anatomist Jamie Davies, who states that “non-living artefacts…, the skeletons, hardened excreta, dead tissue and shells [that provided] the structural support for organic life… long outlast their organic builders”, with those that do eventually break down becoming parts wider geological systems.[7] In light of Davies theories and by drawing parallels between these objects and man-made monuments, Coyne identifies that “the constructions that have survived from antiquity tend to be made of geological material”, whether they exist in their undisturbed form or within man-made constructions. [8] In contrast to man-made structures that are often built following modification of an environment, biologically-made artefacts are described as the result of development that has taken place in response to the environment “via small interactions that then propagate to the formation of the whole organism”.[9] This can be observed in the formation of shells and other fossilised remains, but also in the ways that the earth shapes itself – the formation of crystals, mineral deposits or sedimentary layers all speak of an interaction between non-human, non-living things. If man-made artefacts can be regarded as having semiotic meaning, so too perhaps can these abiotic entities.

Coyne discusses the metaphorical ‘book’ of stone in the context of the Anthropocene. Referring to Nature journal, Coyne defines the Anthropocene as the period in which “the impacts of human activity will probably be observable in the geological stratigraphic record for millions of years into the future.”[10] Evidence of this can be found not only in the ways geological material has been moved throughout human history, but in the increasing changes that are taking place in other abiotic areas - the trajectories of rivers and coastlines, chemical and radiological alteration of the air, soil and water, species depletion, and rising sea-levels.

As Szersznski writes:

We are at a stage in the history of the world where the technologized human, the anthropos… both reads and writes the very long stone book… As the anthropos turns from reading to writing the stone book of nature…what we as humans put down in the stone book is the disruption of other layers, a rifling through the pages, as we drill, mine and extract. We are volcanic, creating extrusive and intrusive formations that break the logic of superposition and burst the relation between space and time in the stone book. Just as magma fills fissures and then cools to create ‘dikes’…we create pages at strange angles, generating a ‘Rubik’s book’ that would need to be read through in all directions simultaneously.[11]

In light of this definition, Coyne outlines that the Anthropocene not only about about modern humanity’s actions in the present but the inscriptions that our activity will leave behind – “we are entering a stage in geological history where the reader writes the book.”[12]

In the chapter’s final section, Coyne departs from his discussion of geology to propose several ways in which modern industrial humanity may respond to the Anthropocene, ranging from complete denial to hyperactivity. This is done through the discussion of five author-character archetypes,[13] namely: the Modernist, concerned with technological fixes to human impact; the Pragmatist, who prioritizes achievable action over emotional response; the Melancholic, who acknowledges the grief and myriad of emotions felt in response to environmental change; the Children of the Earth, interested in a re-attunement with the world as ecological beings both of and from the earth; and the Subversive, an amoral character embodying the transformative qualities of changeability, survival, and creativity that defies strict categorization.

The final character, Coyne argues, is aligned most with both the digital age and myths of trickster gods that feature in various cultures throughout human history – a character that is often connected with the mythological formation of landscapes or geological events.[14] In appropriating the subversive qualities of hacking and the fluidity associated with participating in online spaces, Coyne suggests that the Subversive archetype has the ability, when embodied, to bring about change and adaption in the Anthropocene. Referring to the myth of a raven trickster god, he states:

The trickster is in the dubious position between unity and individuation… the metaphor for Anthropocene humanity… his transformative, relational, human and other-than-human nature renders Raven a more sympathetic, systemic, ecological and supra-earthly figure than humankind…[As] a protagonist, Raven shows us how to live and how not to live in this multifaceted and unpredictable world.[15]

Whether one exists primarily in one group ideologically or shifts between several may vary, however the overarching argument Coyne presents is that as beings that are “part of this world, … we are wholly embedded” within its systems – be they perceivable, readable, living or otherwise. This again reflects the discussion of Fusco’s Master Rock (2015) and similar texts, and the idea that we as beings are deeply connected with the earth beyond our presence on its surface.

Overall, “The Book of Stones” outlines that it is not just living, biological elements of the natural world that we may tune into for semiotic knowledge, but also abiological nature – which is producing just as many, if not more, signs that we can receive and interpret. Weather, seismic activity, geology, and other traditionally regarded non-living entities all take part in this semiotic mesh, together forming the book of stone – one of many books in the expansive library of existence of which we are readers, authors, characters, and scribes.

[1] Coyne, Richard, Network Nature: The Place of Nature in the Digital Age (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020): 80. [2] Coyne, Network Nature, 77. [3] Ibid., 80. [4] Ibid., 77. [5] Ibid. [6] Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “abiological,” accessed March 20, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abiological. [7] Coyne, Network Nature, 77. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid., 81. [11] Ibid., 83. [12] Ibid., 81, [13] Ibid., 93. [14] Ibid. [15] Ibid.

Figure 1: Master Rock performance, the interior of Ben Cruachan, a granite mountain on the west coast of Scotland where Master Rock was performed and recorded, 2015. Photograph by Robert Omerod,

https://www.e-flux.com/education/features/229480/writing-as-a-visible-practice-an-interview-with-maria-fusco .