Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene

APERIODIC TABLE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE EXHIBITION
FRI, MAR 15 – Thurs, MAR 28, 2024

Opening RECEPTION 
FRI, MAR 15, 2024
5:30PM
TRANSCI LAB FOR REAL WORLD CHEMISTRY AND CREATIVE COMMUNICATION, CHEM BLDG. 222

The Periodic Table has been called “nature’s Rosetta Stone,” “the chemist’s map” and “probably the most compact and meaningful compilation of knowledge yet devised.” If the time-honored periodic table hanging in science classrooms around the world enables prediction of properties and relationships between material elements, how might a new aperiodic table, updated and borne from the history-defying conditions of the Anthropocene, assist a global community struggling to navigate the material, ecological, and social justice issues of an accelerating climate crisis?
 
The Aperiodic Table is envisioned as a conceptual framework to represent and re-narrate materials through the beings, places, and ecologies they engage. It may serve as a flexible, ongoing container, utilizing a diverse set of media and collaborative formats to structure knowledge and make it actionable. As the periodic table is organized by rows (periods) and columns (groups) to catalog elements and their properties, the aperiodic table is organized by dynamic interactions of material, body, community, and place, including material design, ethics, and health. 

As a roadmap for the new, strange, and often harmful material formations unique to this geological epoch of human accelerated change, the Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene seeks to bring attention to rarely seen material trajectories – from extraction to waste, past to future.

The crises of the Anthropocene call for a new kind of lab for a new kind of research, with fresh frameworks to dis/organize the findings, updated and more resonant with the times: real world, narrative, and less pure, discrete, and contained. The tranSci Lab is such a space while the Aperiodic Table endeavors to showcase our passion for materials—their properties and dynamics—while lamenting the tragic roles many play in the Anthropocene.

The Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene exhibition is on display at the the tranSci Lab for Real World Chemistry and Creative Communication, Chemistry Building, Room 222 from March 15 - 28, 2024.

PROJECT TEAM

Cassandra Fraser, tranSci Lab Director, Professor, Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering, UVA
Matthew Seibert, Landscape Metrics; Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture, UVA
Berenika Boberska, Feral Studio; Mitchell Visiting Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago 
Ash Duhrkoop, PhD Candidate, Art History, UVA
Hugo Kamya, Professor, Simmons University; Associate Director, Center for Innovation in Clinical Social Work
Julia MacNelly, MLA ‘25, UVA
Rosana Rubio Hernández, Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and City Planning (CEHOPU/CEDEX), Madrid, Spain
Ishani Saraf, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer, A&S Engagements Program, UVA
Theodore Teichman, MLA, UVA
Devin Zuckerman, PhD Candidate, Religious Studies, UVA

Research Team

Hitisha Kalolia, MArch ‘19, Woodbury University
Jetta Lin, MArch ‘24, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Zahid Ahmed Shariff, MArch ‘24, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Agnes To, MLA ‘25, UVA

The Aperiodic Table of the Anthropocene is made possible by the Arts & Sciences Page Barbour Workshop Grant, an Environmental Institute Spark Grant, and an award through The Climate Futures Design Research Challenge, a School of Architecture initiative. This Challenge was funded by the The Urgent Action Fund and The Endowment for our Public Mission—both established by the Class of 1972 in honor of their 50th Reunion and was co-supported by the School of Architecture's Office of the Dean.