Mojave Desert

Sergen Şehitoğlu’s work “Mojave Desert” investigates the Anthropocene via the morphological structure of our planet. By scanning satellite images of the Mojave Desert in the USA, Şehitoğlu focuses in his work on signs of lifehuman vitality in these images within the context of symmetry, repetition and diversity. This work concerns itself with both the biological formal structure of lifehuman vitality and the formal structure of human-created systems of representation. The desert analyzed through satellite images in Şehitoğlu’s work is addressed as a kind of a space of possibilities potentially containing all forms. In the work, the similarities are shown between the idea of life emerging through the combinations of disorganized diffuse inorganic matter and the indicators making life detectable in geographic patterns. Şehitoğlu states that the expression “temporary islands resisting entropy for a while” as used by Norbert Wiener to define life is also valid for the forms generated by life itself. From this aspect, one can say that the changes caused by organisms in their environments directly have a mutual connection with their own biological systems. The “disorganizeddiffuse” forms released in the environment as a result of processing of condensed matter and energy necessary for vital dynamics such as growth, reproduction and reaction to environmental conditions show similarities in manmade artifical objects as well. One of the main purposes of the work is to render this mapping matching visible.