As the name implies, these pieces form a subgroup within series piesterion. They differ from others in the series by comprising groupings instead of single columns. Associated in arrays, each element can be thought of as a stand alone piece, but they are as well married by implied features running through them. These implications are generated by thin, planar insertions of dissimilar materials which align between elements.

The thinking underlying this format, aside from visual aspects, is largely related to the scientific method. As mentioned in the series statement for ‘Piesterion’, the primary intellectual source lies in cores drilled out of ice in Antarctica, Greenland, and elsewhere. These cores are considered invaluable volumes of information; collectively they form libraries. In a sense, each core represents one one-dimensional data set, a single experiment. A full picture can emerge only by the synthesis of information obtained from numerous such sources. In science– and indeed in many other spheres of endeavor– this methodology also pertains: it is only by triangulating on a problem from various viewpoints that a solution emerges.

Thus, each column can be thought of as a single ‘experiment’, and only collectively do they describe ‘strata’ that run through them. Those areas of ‘strata’ that are not directly described can be locally inferred. This process of inference is a one that all of us use continually every day, and thus cuts to one of the cores of what it means to be sentient, synthesizing the implications of the ‘hints that run through’.