Land Art Generator Initiative Lecture 2-19

Elizabeth Monoian & Robert Ferry, Co-founders of LAGI. Photo by Joanna Totolici,  TOTOLICI.COM

Excited to share that artist Elizabeth Monoian & architect Robert Ferry, co-founders of Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) are giving a public lecture at 5pm in the atrium of Building 7 on Friday 2/19 at Cal Poly Pomona.

Prior to the lecture, they will be guests in my LA302L & LA402L studios that are designing entries for the 2016 LAGI competition (entry deadline is May 15th), set adjacent to the Santa Monica Pier.

Site visit with LA302L & LA402L

LAGI 2016 is an ideas competition to design a site-specific public artwork that, in addition to its conceptual beauty, has the ability to harness energy cleanly from nature and convert it into electricity and/or drinking water for the City [of Santa Monica].  http://www.landartgenerator.org/competition2016.html

The lecture is being co-sponsored by the Cal Poly Pomona Student Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

 

Sublime Solar Farm

Photographer Jamey Stillings documents the sublime of Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System for Wired.

Aerial view of Solar Field One at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) on October 27, 2012. Photo shows completed tower construction and heliostat (pairs of mirrors) installation. Mojave Desert, CA

Some of his photos evoking the Nazca lines or Michael Heizer’s Complex – this is quite the documentation of the infrastructural sublime.

Clark Mountain and ground work for future power block of Solar Field One. January 14, 2011.

View north of Ivanpah Solar showing all three solar fields with heliostat installation complete in Solar Field One in the foreground. October 27, 2012.

There is a remarkable amount of intact vegetation beneath the heliostats – making me wonder if it is possible to design a low-impact solar farm?

Installed heliostats in Solar Field One and adjacent section of undisturbed desert terrain of the site’s alluvial fan. January 6, 2012.

Installed heliostats in “safe” or resting position. June 2, 2012

Workers install a heliostat on a pylon in Solar Field One. June 4, 2012.

More of Jamey Stillings pics at Aerial Photos of Giant Google-Funded Solar Farm Caught in Green Energy Debate | Raw File | Wired.com. and Stillings’ own website.

Xochimilco in Los Angeles

The creator of a toy-filled folk-art garden near downtown LA, Charles Ray Walker, has died. ‘Bamboo Charlie’ as he was known, created a uniquely personal landscape similar to the Islands of Dolls in Xochimilco, Mexico City. His garden is the latest contribution to Southern California’s folk art legacy that includes: Rhodia’s Watts Tower, Grandma Prisby’s Bottle Village, Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Museum, Rubel’s Castle, Salvation Mountain, and Alan Kimble Fahey’ recently razed ‘Phonehedge West’.

Let’s hope that Bamboo Charlie’s garden quickly finds a benefactor and guardian to preserve it’s unique character.

Levitated Mass Details

‘God is in the details’ to quote Mies, and some of the details and craft of Levitated Mass are the devil. If art can be defined by the highest level of craft, then more should be expected from Michael Heizer’s team – especially the engineers and the welders. Almost seems that the trench was designed before they found the rock, and the brackets were the ‘make-it-work’ solution with some of the sloppiest welds this side of a vocational school. So here is a rundown of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Levitated Mass installation at LACMA.

Concrete – the good

The concrete work is highly refined at the level of a James Turrell Skyspace (but not equal to Tado Ando or other concrete masters), with a very smooth skimcoat on all exposed surfaces.  I’m puzzled by the triangular notches at the ends of the trench (see above), as they are gratuitous interruptions to the visual pull of the rock. The integral ADA mandated handrails are quite elegant, and again invoke Turrell.

Earthworks – the good

The grading around the trench is quite precise, but seems designed for easy maneuvering of the bulldozer, not for visual or tactile effect. From the Cor-Ten rail edging, there is a gentle slope to the walls of the trench. This puts the Rock at waist height when standing next to it. First impression is that the soil of the slope towards the trench has been treated with a polymer stabilizer as it has a slight sheen and is darker (see below) then the adjacent decomposed granite surface. While suppressing dust and minimizing erosion are worthwhile goals, the desert that the decomposed granite is intended to evoke is a dusty and eroding place, so soil stabilization works against the larger intent.

That edging strip could be the crown of a railroad extrusion, if weathering steel was used for train tracks.

Metalwork – the bad and the ugly

Unvailing Levitated Mass

The official dedication ceremony for Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass is set for 11am on Sunday, June 24th at LACMA. Christopher Knight of the LATimes has an early review of the work with photos by Mel Melcon (all the images used in this post). Knight’s piece is a solid review that pulls in a myriad of non-obvious precedents, potential influences and narratives that haven’t been part of the discourse to-date.

“Levitated Mass” is a piece of isolated desert mystery cut into a dense urban setting that’s home to nearly 10 million people. A water-hungry lawn north of LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion was torn up and replaced by a dry, sun-blasted expanse of decomposed granite. A notched gray channel of polished concrete slices 456 feet across the empty field, set at a slight angle between the pavilion and 6th Street. Like a walk-in version of an alien landscape painting by Surrealist Yves Tanguy, quiet dynamism inflects a decidedly sepulchral scene.

What really, really surprises me about the installation are the hefty steel brackets that the monolith is mounted to. All preliminary descriptions evoked a rock sitting directly on the concrete walls of the trench, not mounted on massive steel corbels. The maximalist brackets are a significant shift towards structuralism and away from from Heizer’s minimalist material palette of soil, stone, and concrete (artificial stone). If hidden mountings and connections had been utilized for the rock (I’m thinking about Brian Murphy’s Hopper House) or other highly refined mininalist architecture, then we could have experienced the illusion that the boulder was hovering. As detailed, those gusset plates express the shear mass being supported and bring the levitating mass crashing back to earth.

Lots of architects have used similarly proportioned gussets with Cor-Ten structural elements – this is no Gehry, Eric Owen Moss, or Thom Mayne building though – perhaps Michael Rotondi is part of their lineage. (Here are some images of similar details: 1, 2). The artists that pop to mind from these brackets include Mark di Survero with his structural steel sculptures and Serra for his pioneering use of weathering steel.

Heizer interviewed

The LAtimes scored a rare interview with the reclusive artist of Levitated Mass (opening June 24 at LACMA).

Photo: Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times / May 24, 2012)

“I think there is a draw from the rock itself, a magnetism we will see when the sculpture is completed,” he said. “But will the artwork have the same interest value as moving the rock around did?” … “I make static art, not dynamic art. That’s what I do.”

Static art” is Heizer’s shorthand for the longevity or durability of projects like the boulder installation, designed “to last 3,500 years,”

…”What I liked about this rock was 98% size, 2% looks.”

“The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work,” Heizer said. “Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural.”

“The history of American art in a way begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings,” he said. “This theme of bigness — all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.”

“My paintings are big too. I’m not very good at making small stuff,”

Untitled Infrastructures by Andy Wilcox

There are many cool things about co-teaching with Andy Wilcox this quarter at Cal Poly, a highlights has been our discussions about wildness and infrastructure. Even if he wasn’t a valued colleague, his paintings falls into the genre of infrastructural art that is frequently explored here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7). So I’m very happy to help publicize his current show at Curbside Gallery in Santa Ana.

Untitled Infrastructures

Andy Wilcox

In the adaptation to and of the nascent and seemingly unorganized wild of the in-between lays a fertile future. There is a hidden layer of the city that crouches between roadways and bridges, factories and rails, curbs and gutters—a collateral infrastructure of mythic potential.  Accepting this condition as the foundational structure for a higher functioning future, Untitled Infrastructures envisions a future of feral values and a wilder future.  Welcome to the wilderness.

Opening reception May 5th, 7pm-11pm
Curbside Gallery
Santa Ana
http://curbsidegallery.com/
https://www.facebook.com/curbsidegallery

Andy applied for the Rome Prize [pdf of his application] this year, but wasn’t selected.

Touchdown of Heizer’s Rock

Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass touched down on April 17th over its 15′ deep trench reported LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“It landed perfect,” [Heizer] declared to Govan, observing that the rock hit the grout “exactly as it was intended.” Then, not missing a beat, Heizer turned to one of the seven engineers on the project to discuss the myriad ways in which the sculpture is being seismically secured…

Late last month… Heizer quietly arrived from his remote compound in the Nevada desert, where he has been working for the past four decades on “City,” a vast, Stonehenge-scaled project near Area 51, the secret military installation.

Since then, he’s been living with his wife and dog in an Airstream trailer on the LACMA campus, just a stone’s throw from his artwork, which will allow visitors to walk down the trench and under the boulder, positioned 15 feet overhead. Heizer’s expected to return to Nevada later this week[.]

Funny that the only picture of the artist is with Frank Gehry! What does Frank have to do with the installation or even LACMA???

Narrative Los Angeles

For my 2nd year BSLA studio at Cal Poly Pomona this spring, I’m taking the students on a 3-day tour of narrative landscapes around the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

View 203L 2012 Narrative Landscapes in a larger map.

Here is the FINAL ITINERARY:  LA_203L_Field_Trip_LOS ANGELES [pdf]

From high art to outsider art, petroglyphs to historic places central to the founding of the city, the Southern California landscape is embedded with narratives. We’re avoiding most of the kitsch and crassly commercial in search of the authentic genius loci. Okay, the Getty Villa is perhaps one of the most gauche gardens in existance, but there is something worth learning about this over-the-top display of narcissism.

Tentatively, here is the itinerary:

Wind and Water

Hint.FM (Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg) created a seductive visualization of wind flows for the US. Click the image for a real-time animation and links to the past few weeks of weather patterns. (via Lian)

Equally beguiling is David Wicks’ Drawing Water, which documents precipitation with the water transfers to urban users.

These maps remind me of ocean current visualization that I saw few months back created by JPL and MIT.

Heizer’s Crane

A 700-ton crane is now being assembled to lift Michael Heizer’s 340-ton Levitated Mass rock into position at LACMA via the LATimes, while the 600-ton transporter is being disassembled. The pending lift (stay tuned for when) will be the next performance event (even if the rock only is raised up just a few inches) that should attract huge crowds – so what else is LACMA planning for that event?

Heizer will be on hand for the lift and oversee the final positioning of the rock according to LACMA spokeswoman Miranda Carroll. The description of how the area around the slot will be ‘ landscaped with granite that will make the plot look very similar to the Riverside quarry from which the rock was taken’ undermines the potential power of the piece to evoke the sublime and instead is on a slippery slope into kitsch along the lines of a zoo or an ecotainment store  (i.e. REI or Gander Mountain). I can only hope that the artist is able to create an evocative landscape worthy of the attention (both the positive and negative) that this piece is generating.

The sculpture is slated to open in June, so stay tuned.

Original Levitated Mass

via Observatoire du Land Art, here are the original drawings by Michael Heizer for Levitated Mass from 1969.

Michael Heizer, Levitated Mass, 1969 (detail). © Volker-H. Schneider / Marzona

Michael Heizer, Levitated Mass, 1969.  © Volker-H. Schneider / Marzona

(Based on Paper – Die Sammlung Marzona. Revolution der Kunst 1960-1975,  p.154)

Visiting Heizer’s Truck

Infrascape Design visited Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass while it took the weekend off in Chino Hills as it heads to LACMA.

Levitated Mass on the move

Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass has started it’s journey on Tuesday, Feb 28th at 11pm, and it will arrive at LACMA ‘(very) early in the morning on Saturday, March 10.’ More on twitter: @LACMARock. I’ll be updating this post and tracking the move.

LACMA’s Gawker Guide has details for viewing the rock as it moves along the streets of Los Angeles. LATimes slideshow, and on flickr.

Monday, March 5th Layover

Location on Friday, March 2nd

Thursday March 1st layover location

Wednesday Feb 29th Layover

Layovers include:

…at Chino Avenue, just east of Chino Hills Parkway in Diamond Bar around 4 a.m. Thursday (March 1) and stay there the entire day, according to museum and city officials.

It will resume in a westerly direction into Rowland Heights Thursday night and into Friday, where a stopover is planned at Buttonwood Lane and Pathfinder Road for the third and fourth day of the journey, Friday and Saturday, according to the museum.

The boulder will park at La Mirada Boulevard and Leffingwell Road in La Mirada on March 4. – Pasadena Star

And:

 A weekend stopover is planned at Buttonwood Lane and Pathfinder in Rowland Heights for the third and fourth day of the journey, on Saturday and Sunday… – Whittier Daily News

Originally on Infrascape Design here. Via Zev. Official LACMA news of the move here.

LAtimes

Renewable Energy Art – Patrick Marold

Patrick Marold is an artist exploring the intersection between natural phenomina, energy, and perception – aka renewable energy art. His Windmill Project in Vail, Burlington Vermont, and Iceland, plants posts with anemometers connected to LED downlights to illuminate the wind rustling across the site.

The Windmill Project from Patrick Marold on Vimeo.

The WINDMILL PROJECT was developed out my desire to map and watch the wind, harnessing its behaviors. While living in Iceland during the long winter nights, I would install this sculptural tool in the pasture and hills. Iceland’s abundance of wind and dark hours provided the perfect setting to develop this idea. The most recent Windmill installation in Burlington, Vermont lasted 14 weeks last fall; and the 2007 installation in Vail, Colorado employed as many as 2700 windmills, covering over 15,000 square feet. For nearly 2 months, these windmills translated the valley’s winds into blooming and breathing bodies of light.

The WINDMILL PROJECT involves placing a mass of light generating windmills in specific outdoor locations. The wind forces each windmill to produce a relevant amount of light, in a sense digitizing the wind. This work of art converts the energy of wind into a responsive visual choreography, exhibiting the rhythm of a mechanical process that is collaborating with the harmony and chaos of wind.

When there are gentle breezes that pass over the windmills, a dim glow appears, while strong gusts create bright pulsing waves of light. This sculpture momentarily embraces the wind allowing for a more attainable vision of this natural element, systematically creating a slight delay in the viewers’ sense of time. Some people have compared the visual representation to that of a flock of birds collectively swarming in the sky, or the uniquely animate northern lights. The impressive living body of light provokes a deeper perspective of the wind as it passes by.

Holly Solar Products + Suntronics (Petaluma, CA) helped fabricate the lights and turbines.