Interior Cosmology

Definition

Interior cosmology names the self-contained world-making that Laura Garófalo-Khan attributes to the grotto and to ornament: the capacity of an interior (or an ornamental surface) to constitute an alternative world that "does not need to reflect the local conditions in which the decorated object (or building) is made." The concept's founding gesture is Miller's epigraph — "the grotto is above all, a metaphor of the cosmos" — and its operative formulation is the chapter's: "Ornament, much like the grottoes it populates, is a way of defining a self-contained cosmology that does not need to reflect the local conditions in which the decorated object (or building) is made. Like the flowers of a garden, these components are free to fabricate an alternative ecology in a physical sense, which in turn engenders an alternative cosmology in a conceptual sense."

The historical grottoes are the concept's archive: the English garden grotto's surfaces "were not attempting to replicate nature, but to create a new cosmology, a hidden world in the tranquil English countryside, a space of emotional exaltation and even horror to match the sublime bent of contemporary literature and art" — grottoes that "did not stop at the redesign of nature, but created extravagant psychological experiences that represented license to manipulate human nature as well." The Grotta Grande's allegorical sculptures "intended to draw the visitor into an alternative reality," the interior "designed to appear like a ruinous incarnation of Roman antiquity, displacing the viewer both physically and temporally." The contemporary form: Beesley's installations "define fully immersive cosmology as otherworldly as the fanciful grotto in its original conception"; SOL Grotto's tube wall lets "the occupant cobb[le] together the disparate components of this sensorial experience" into "an alternative, and perhaps otherworldly, landscape."

Interior cosmology is the grotto-chapter's version of the wiki's narrative-space and heterotopia cluster: the interior as an alternative order rather than a container — but grounded, here, in ornament's physical excess ("an alternative ecology") rather than in narration or institution.

Key Thinkers

• Laura Garófalo-Khan — the concept's source: ornament and grotto as self-contained cosmologies engendered by alternative ecologies.
• Naomi Miller — the historical warrant: the grotto as "a metaphor of the cosmos" (Heavenly Caves, 1982, p. 7, via the chapter); not yet paged (see log).
• Philip Beesley — the contemporary exemplar: installations defining "fully immersive cosmology as otherworldly as the fanciful grotto in its original conception."

Related Concepts

• artificial-grotto — the concept's home case: the grotto as "above all, a metaphor of the cosmos."
• performative-ornament — the making-mechanism: ornament "free to fabricate an alternative ecology… which in turn engenders an alternative cosmology."
• narrative-space — the representational relative: the Grotta Grande's "alternative reality" and temporal displacement as spatial narration.
• event-space — the temporal form: the cosmology-enveloping interior as "a place outside the normal condition."
• heterotopia — Foucault's "counter-sites" as the philosophical cousin: the other-space whose order deviates from the ordinary world.
• uncanny — the cosmology's affective edge: "emotional exaltation and even horror"; "the uncanny nature of a sentient environment."
• biophilia — the ecology–cosmology link: the alternative ecology (physical) that engenders the alternative cosmology (conceptual).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Sensorial interior landscapes (Garófalo-Khan 2018) — the concept's founding source: Miller's cosmos epigraph; the self-contained-cosmology claim for ornament; the English grotto's "new cosmology"; the Grotta Grande's alternative reality; Hylozoic Soil's "fully immersive cosmology"; the alternative-ecology/alternative-cosmology formula.

Open Questions

• If ornament's cosmology "does not need to reflect the local conditions," is interior cosmology therefore inherently portable — a designed world that travels like Campos's tapestry boundary (territory, liberated-interior) — and what distinguishes it from scenography?
• "Alternative ecology… in turn engenders… alternative cosmology" — does the physical (moisture, air, plants, chemical globules) actually cause the conceptual world, or is the causal arrow the chapter's rhetoric? (Compare Drobnick's aromatopia, where the sensory totality "gives the impression" of completeness.)
• Is the interior cosmology an escape from the everyday (the grotto as enclave) or a demonstration of what every interior secretly does (the room, too, "does not need to reflect the local conditions")?