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The Crawick Multiverse, Sanquhar & Kirkconnel, Scotland 2015

The Crawick Multiverse was created on a former open-cast coal mine. It is a major land restoration project intended to benefit the communities of upper Nithsdale. Constructed from material found on the site, most spectacularly 2,000 boulders, it conveys cosmological themes – galactic mounds, comet collisions, a sun amphitheatre – and culminates in a most recent speculation: that we inhabit one of a number of universes, one surprisingly balanced to produce life and mind. As can be seen in the plans on this page, this well-tuned universe is one among over a hundred that are presented as boulders, on the Multiverse spiral. The spiral mound (seen right in the first photo) is at the end of a walk north, and upwards, in an intimate part of the landscape protected by scrub birch.The North-Point sign, and the overall plan, show the North-South Line, and the rhythmical cadence of upright stones (which rise and fall and rise in height) and lead directly to the Omphalos, with its mythic and scientific representations of the centre of the earth. (Scroll down to following 2 paragraphs which relate to the images on pages 2/3.)The North-South Line of boulders leads to the Sun Amphitheatre at the heart of the scheme, and further south to the east and west shelter points. The first pastel, an aerial view, shows the two comet collisions that fly apart as an explosion of rocks. Violence and harmony are also depicted in further cosmic events. A black hole at the centre of the Andromeda Galaxy, pulls space-time into a white wormhole. Further on, the black hole billows up, in red sandstone, at the centre of the Milky Way. Again, boulder and rock rhythms are carefully worked out with the well-formed and chaotic stones. As the sketch shows, the Milky Way galaxy is a spiral caused by a density wave going through the stars, planets, dust, gas and rubbish. It is the space between leaning rocks, and their flat surface continuities, which constitutes the art of stone composition. The next two photos show some historic coincidences. Often in prehistory, when ancestors died, they were first turned into wooden pillars, and then when memory faded, generic stone verticals were built to last forever. Here a linear dance, recreated at the June 21st opening, unintentionally mirrors the past.In four-billion years, Andromeda and the Milky Way Galaxies are predicted to pass through each other. They will mutually strip stars, planets and rocks in a dance of gravity, depicted in the night pastel. The two galaxies lead to the Supercluster of galaxies located along filaments, or rivers of gravity, first created by a scaffold of dark matter (which runs as black screed between the green superclusters and thin lines of galaxies).The Multiverse, of 100 boulders, climbs up a green spiral. It consists of average slabs (the principle of mediocrity), and three failed universes, where the kinetic force is 2 strong RIP; and three failed where Gravity is 2 Strong. By contrast, four well-balanced universes rise up to our sensitive universe. At its base PIC indicates the principle of increasing complexity; while HOTSTRETCH signifies the fast hot stretch of space-time at the origin moment.

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