Rift
Zone uses air bubbling up through fine sand to suggest
a small-scale geothermal landscape. By turning a knob,
viewers can change the pressure of the air rising up through
the sand and alter the shapes and patterns of the landscape.
The aerators that activate the sand are arranged in a composition
of three elements: a circle, a line and a dot, corresponding
to the three kinds of rift zones that occur on earth: solitary
volcanoes, fracture zones such as the one spreading on
the island of Hawaii, and the ring dike that forms in the
crater of a volcano as the central plug cools and then
a new eruption occurs around the perimeter in a circle.