Ripple Topography

Can't say I've fully grasped the science behind cross-bedding yet, but I was quickly and fully hypnotized by these computer animations of sedimentary migration and deposition. Some screen caps follow.

I'll assume that everyone will download and watch them on a continuous trance-inducing loop.

Cross-bedding

Cross-bedding

I wonder if you can harness energy from these land migrations and conceive a park out of it: a terrestrial version of the Wave Garden. Just settle yourself atop a dune, watch landscapes after landscapes pass by, and at the end of your picnic, you find yourself on the other side of the continent.

Cross-bedding

Cross-bedding

You can, in fact, download the bedform simulation software, supposedly the same one used to produce the animations, to create your own rippling topography.

Such as these:

Cross-bedding

Cross-bedding

Cross-bedding

Obviously, it brings up interesting scenarios of landscape architects, in drunken stupors at 3 in the morning, downloading the software to design their own sinuous landforms. Perhaps as a gag, to throw off the visiting critic. Or to one-up Michael van Valkenburgh and Kathryn Gustafson, ending their monopoly on tumuli earthforms. Or perhaps a moment of inspired experimentation. But most likely because they simply can't navigate their way through formZ or Maya or even AutoCAD inebriated.

And just to add a bit more oddity (or realism) to the scenario, imagine them sprinkling a few digitized models of Classical architecture into the simulation and laughing, still drunk, at their fixed proportions and rigid geometry rapidly crumbling, dissolving in the ever shifting landscape.