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Cultivating fulgurites as petrifying chaos, blending scientific fact and fictional attribution, examining the domestication of disorder

Fulgurites are fossilized lightning bolts, minerals that form when lightning strikes a sand ground. Its compounds melt around the flash and solidify as its offprint.

When dug out from underground, the fulgurites fumbled early discoverers due to their organic shape. They misread them as “fruits from the subterranean fire” which have grown straight from hell.

The fulgurite fruit presents inverted growing mechanisms, being only an imprint and thus an indicator of its surroundings. It is this fruit that I attempted to cultivate inside a metal printer.

What does the harvest look like when such a plant does not grow in deserts but is produced in a sandbox? How to cultivate the fulgurite fruit and thus: how to domesticate a thunderstorm?