Beneath the surface, layers compress. Each stratum holds the memory of what was once exposed to light — sediment compacted by time into something denser, richer, more essential. Data, too, has its geology: the fresh readings at the surface, the aggregated patterns just below, and deep beneath everything, the bedrock assumptions that no one questions anymore.

We descend not to find answers but to feel the weight of accumulated structure. The beauty of a geological cross-section is not in what it tells us but in the sheer visual poetry of its layers — each one a different color, a different texture, a different epoch made visible. So it is with data made into art: the meaning dissolves, and what remains is pattern, rhythm, the slow pulse of something vast and indifferent and beautiful.