Takir is a hybrid installation that simulates the transformation of a seabed into a desert landscape known as a takir. Takirs form in flat basins: when a shallow layer of water evaporates, the muddy bottom becomes exposed, dries, contracts, and breaks into polygonal slabs of different shapes and sizes. The scale and geometry of these slabs depend on sediment composition, salinity, and drying conditions.

Takirs develop when the groundwater level lies deeper than 1.5 meters, allowing salts to move down into the groundwater and rise back to the surface through capillary action. They are characteristic of the deserts of Asia’s subboreal belt and can stretch for tens of square kilometers.

Similar processes are unfolding today in the basin of the dried-up Aral Sea, which once lay between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Formerly one of the world’s largest saltwater lakes, it has dramatically shrunk since the 1960s due to the diversion of its rivers for Soviet irrigation projects. Its disappearance is considered one of the most severe ecological disasters caused by human intervention. As the sea retreated, a desert emerged on its former seabed, radically altering the region’s landscape. Depending on the annual flow of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, certain areas may briefly refill or dry again, turning the territory cyclically from desert into seabed and back. These rapid oscillations are now closely studied by ecologists and geologists.

The installation recreates these cyclical transformations. Samples of clay sediment are alternately liquefied with water or dried by hot air from custom-built compressors. As the substance dries, it cracks into a micro-model of the takir surface. Overhead cameras capture the process, while an algorithm transforms the emerging crack patterns into soundscapes. After a period of observation, the containers are refilled, the „seabed“ is re-mixed by a robotic mechanism, and the cycle begins again.

Takir is the final project in Geological Trilogy, a series by ::vtol:: exploring major natural or anthropogenic geological and planetary phenomena.

LOCATIOn

DATE

November 28, 2025 – April 5, 2026