Eight easy pieces for tourists

Art from Space is going on honeymoon for the next few weeks and will be back in August. We'll be visiting some of these places while we're away and will be introducing some new Art From Space contributors on our return. Until then, in no particular order, here's some virtual travelling for you:

Looking like a Martian landscape, ULURU, often referred to as Ayers Rock.

Not sure why but the STATUE OF LIBERTY was one of my first pieces of google travel several years ago.

I like a good shadow on google maps to provide an interesting perspective on primarily vertical structures that wouldn't otherwise be too interesting from above. The Thames almost looks like concrete and provides a great surface for sharp shadows, including this great anamorphic rendering of the LONDON EYE.

Responsible for putting the Spanish industrial town of Bilbao squarely on the traveller's map, here's Frank Gehry's GUGGENHEIM.

Originally built as a temporary structure for a world expo, perhaps explaining its daring style, the EIFFEL TOWER was originally hated by Parisians but is still going strong.

Given the usual marginalisation of contemporary art as an activity, I've always been puzzled by is the immense popularity of TATE MODERN, which is one of London's top tourist attractions. How often do the people visiting the Tate engage in the arts when they're at home, and why would they spend the hard-earned holiday time doing something that ordinarily doesn't interest them? Same goes for the LOUVRE, which is the first structure I've found so far that lets you see through a window.

On the Zambezi River on the border between Zambie and Zimbabwe, here is the VICTORIA FALLS, considered the largest waterfall not because of height or width but because it has the largest sheet of falling water.

Echoes from the sky

Since first seeing Disinformation's photos of them in the catalogue for David Toop's 2000 Sonic Boom exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I've always been intrigued by the sound mirrors near Dungeness, and eager to visit if an opportunity ever arises. Meanwhile, they definitely warrant a GOOGLE VISIT. More are scattered around the South-east coast of England and were built from as early as 1914 to amplify listening ability to up to 20 miles. Intended to provide early warning of an aircraft attack, they were soon superceded by faster aircraft and radar. I see there has been talk of resurrecting these and, using new technology, building a counterpart in France - was this ever done?

Portable versions were also developed, including the fearsomely named Japanese War Tuba. There are some great images of the acoustic mirrors here, and more about sound weapons on the Stalker blog here, here and here. As Stalker notes, this kind of weaponry is still quite contemporary and rather scary. But could be fun in the hands of an artist though. I'd love to see (hear) focussed sound being projected from hot air balloons. Thanks to James Pinker, who alerted us to this latest development with rather insidious implications if put in the hands of unscrupulous marketing people. At least the crap cannon has been shown to be an urban myth!

The Sound of the Suburbs

This interesting one came over the Audio Foundation list a few days ago... The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (defra) have been recording towns and cities all over the UK to produce noise maps so you can see, and preserve, the quality of noise in your neighbourhood. The resultant maps are based entirely on the volume of roads, rail, airports and industry but, as this blogger has argued several times, the project makes the assumption that all noise annoys (apologies to Pete Shelley). Aside from the psychedelic surroundings, Buckingham Palace (see image, bottom left) is looking pretty tranquil. As noted in stalker's comments, the Schafers would be fascinated.

The China Syndrome

I've been doing a little reading about apocalypse movies in advance of next week's exhibition, The Swarm. Whether it's attacking insects, tomatoes, tidal waves or aliens, according to a text by Kim Newman, most of these films are a symptom of anxiety about the bomb. As Newman puts it The China Syndrome (1979) "takes its title from the facetious term for what would theoretically happen if a nuclear reactor went into meltdown - the plutonium would eat through the world and turn up in China."

I couldn't help thinking of Maddie Leach's Andalucía 2007 project earlier this year at Te Tuhi. With a little help from some contractors and bored.com, She dug a hole in the gallery courtyard and emerged in a Spanish olive grove. You can try it for yourself here by zooming into your chosen hole location and then clicking on the map. If LAKE TAUPO really had no bottom, you could swim to a strange looking island just out of CASA DE PERABAD, halfway between Seville and Madrid.

The China Syndrome is about a nuclear plant on THREE MILE ISLAND, Pennsylvania. According to bored.com's hole-digging service, a meltdown would actually leak through to HERE, in the ocean about 1000km south-west of Perth. So we're not so safe from nuclear catastrophe in the South Pacific after all.

Image: Maddie Leach, Andalucía (detail), 2007. Excavated hole (1m x 2m), earth, tarpaulin, fencing mesh and waratahs.

Serra from space

Once more following the lead of overthenet, currently at large and posting art missives from around the world, I decided to hunt out some Richard Serra works and see how his iconic structures bare up to the harsh truth of the satellite eye. For starters HERE is the work overthenet have just cycled through (cheers for the plug M&J).

Also in Germany, Bramme for the Ruhr District in Essen shows up as little more than an enigmatic SHADOWY WISP in the large clearing it is sited on. It seems this expansive setting photographs well, and this account suggests that the mound is in fact part of the work - note the scale of the work as indicated by the tideline of graffiti.

TORQUE has an impressive traffic-directing placement in the middle of a South German University campus. This one also has a graffiti tideline (see picture above).

Here is EL MUR in Barcelona. Someone asked me earlier this year whether it makes a difference whether I know these sites other than on cyberspace. I suspect it's more interesting and intriguing if I only know them as aerial-digital representations, but I'll report back if I bump into El Mur, or any other alien art, later this month.

TERMINAL in Bochum, Germany, also has been placed to stop traffic. The nice thing about this one is that the aerial view provides an interior.

THIS one is Iron Mountain Run in Connecticut.

Famously, Tilted Arc is long gone, but THIS is where it once stood. And then there is the 38-tonne sculpture that somehow disappeared from a Madrid museum. One of his largest works, Te Tuhirangi Contour, is situated just north of Auckland, but the entire private estate it resides on is MYSTERIOUSLY BLURRY.

It seems Serra translates well to satellite and I could keep going with more examples. But lastly, SEA LEVEL seems perfect for the google traveller. Not only does it reward horizontal scanning, it has an inherent reference that helps the viewer situate it vertically in relationship to its surroundings, something that is usually lost from this angle. I'll let this website do the explaining:

"Sea Level (1996), located on the outskirts of Zeewolde, is situated on either side of a canal. From the adjacent dikes, there emerge two concrete walls which are placed at a diagonal to the canal and in alignment with each other. The viewer mentally connects these two walls with each other, creating an imaginary segment of wall that runs straight across the canal. The top edge of the wall is at sea level; a fascinating interaction arises between the wall, the top edge of the dike and the surface of the water in the canal."

Meanwhile, back on overthenet, they have now noted another monument-al work, which is yet more in the vein of straight-up-as-high-as-you-can-go. The result when given an aerial view, as will eventually be demonstrated HERE, is that there isn''t much action in any other axis .

Blowing in the wind

The Auckland Art Gallery's Outpost blog has just posted some great images of their George Rickey (1907-2002) Double L kinetic sculpture being put into storage for the duration of the gallery's lengthy redevelopment. Outpost also notes a couple of other editions of the same work; one outside the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, which has much better AERIAL IMAGERY (pictured) than its AUCKLAND COUNTERPART, which is essentially invisible. And also a third edition at the Pepsico Sculpture Park in New York. Strangely, although the surrounding properties have perfect resolution at the closest magnification, the GROUNDS OF PEPSICO look like they have been photoshopped with one of those watercolour-type filters. Is there a copyright issue with works of art appearing on google maps? Still, based on this record of what is at the park, we do get to play spot-the-mystery-object with all the large, dark blobs.

A map of the browser uprising

It passed me by earlier this week, but apparently Firefox staged a download day as an attempt to set a Guinness Record for software downloads. The final count was more than eight million and, at time of writing, the record is being assessed by Guinness.

What is especially interesting is, if you look at the interactive map showing which countries downloaded how many copies, it provides a fascinating view of global connectivity. North Korea is amongst the few countries that rated zero. Does that mean no one is online in North Korea, or that download speeds there are so slow that this is beyond their capability, or the internet is so controlled that nobody could take part?

It is heartening to see that nearly 500 people in Myanmar managed to make the download, and even Bhutan got 55. Not surprisingly, most of Africa only made three-digit totals or less. It is strange that the OPEC nations didn't do so well, but it's possibly revealing that Iraq and Afghanistan struggled to come even close to the yet-to-be-demolished-by-the-axis-of-blunder country they flank: Iran.

I started wondering about density of countries, the economies that more populated places can support, and how that might relate to connectivity and technology uptake. Sifting the SpreadFirefox forum, I found this site that lets you sort countries alphabetically or by population, area and density - elsewhere on the site there is a map of computer language use, and google earth overlays to download too. From these figures, someone has already started analysing the Firefox download statistics. Of course, these figures can't be considered an assesment of pure connectivity. They could also be taken as an overview of where there is most resistance to Microsoft's Explorer monopoly. Perhaps North Korea are all happily downloading things at terrific rates on Internet Explorer because Bill Gates has become friendly with Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, much like google have become chummy with China?

I should acknowledge that it is quite probable my reading of the Firefox map has been influenced by Fiona Jack's Missing Peoples project, which lists the nationalities NOT included in the Merriam Webster's dictionary. The dictionary, it seems, has a conspicuous geographical blind-spot!

Image: Map of international character usage, downloaded today from World Gazetteer.

Energy Fields

Yesterday I received an email at work about the falling storage in New Zealand's hydro lakes and the need to conserve power. You can check the daily status of the lakes here. I thought I'd have a look at the actual lakes...

Here is the CLYDE DAM on the Clutha River, forming Lake Dunstan. Notice the historic MINING SITE downstream towards Alexandra. This was one of several controversial hydro schemes of the era, another being the Manapouri Dam, which was stopped, perhaps partly thanks to a hugely popular protest song by John Hanlon. Check out the frosty water and wafting clouds of the SITE TODAY, which is completely shrouded if you zoom out. The most impressive is LAKE PUKAKI, with its glassy water and long SCULPTED CHUTE that rivals anything being done in the Nevada Desert.

Of particular interest now is THIS DAM, near the town of Horahora. As with many hydro projects, the harnessing of nature is at the expense of other sites that become flooded, washing away local histories. The story of Horahora has now been retold through Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena's 2007 project, Aniwaniwa, which recalls the flooding of the Horahora power station where Graham's grandfather worked. The exhibition catalogue has some great images, including the one above, of the power station's last stand.

So I started looking for other large power-generating land installations. There's a lot of solar activity going on in the Mojave Desert. Solar One and Solar Two make for good MAP VIEWING. There's something intriguing about looking from a satellite at what are essentially mirrors but are absorbing and storing the light that is essential to looking (note to self: re-visit Robert Smithson's writings). Lots of good IRRIGATION CIRCLES just to the east too. Someone has just pointed out to me how much they resemble Graham's Tangaroa sculpture, named after the Maori god of the sea. And there's no escaping the resemblence of HALF-CIRCLE irrigation fields to Gretchen Albrecht's lunette paintings.

The PS10 project in Spain (pictured) has a particularly sculptural look, but unfortunately ISN'T VISIBLE on google maps just yet. This BBC report gives a full rundown on how the tower works and I can't wait to see how it looks from above with the jets of light and surrounding "aura". Also yet to be added to the GOOGLE MAP is Nellis Solar Power Plant, the largest of its kind in North America. Nellis is part of the Nellis Air Force Base on the outskirts of Las Vegas and has all kinds of INTERESTING CONFIGURATIONS of military HARDWARE SITTING AROUND.

Images: Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena, Aniwaniwa (still), 2007; Horahora Power Station being flooded as villagers look on, 1947; PS10 tower power plant, Sanlúcar la Mayor, Spain.

Battle of the Triffids

Currently on show at Te Tuhi, Pakuranga is Land Wars, an ambitious multi-platform exhibition curated by Emma Bugden, which looks at the ways land is contested in our present age. John Hurrell has reviewed the show on his eyeCONTACT blog.

Amongst the usual contemporary range of documented sites and actions, relational projects and moving image footage, there is a set of intentionally old-fashioned looking paintings by Michael Shepherd. Michael is the master of artificial aging and could probably paint a convincing looking plasma screen and still have it look like it was made 50 years ago. He was also acknowledged with a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MoNZOM?) for services to art in the latest Queen's Birthday honours list.

I was particularly taken by the wall-label description of his work in Land Wars, which proposes an interesting analogy between the serried ranks of garden centre products and fascist processions:

[...] The three works exhibited here consider changes to the natural wilderness through human intervention. In this, Shepherd includes destruction through development of land but also well intentioned acts of cultivation which unwittingly have an impact on reshaping nature.

The painting Versailles refers to perhaps the most famous garden in the world, the Château de Versailles, described by the artist as the “ultimate constructed landscape”. In Shepherd’s version the formal garden of Versailles is replaced by the Oratia Native Nurseries in the Waitakeres, where native seedlings are laid out waiting to be purchased and planted, a precise and somewhat unnatural arrangement which the artist has likened to a “Nuremberg rally for plants”. [...]

Here, for your own consideration, are the battlegrounds of ORATIA and VERSAILLES.

Image: Michael Shepherd, Versailles 2007/8. Oil on linen. Courtesy of Jane Sanders, Auckland

Sculpture parking

A recent post on overthenet had me wondering about just how impressive sculpture parks might look by satellite. There's a bunch of them around and they're specifically set up for big outdoor work.

Here's Vigeland Park, as recommended by overthenet. An impressive setting but not much to be SEEN FROM ABOVE.

There are two public parks just out of Auckland. Connell's Bay on Waiheke Island; the YELLOW SPECK ON THE RIGHT of the path going north from the bay is probably the Phil Price piece gyrating away. And Brick Bay Sculpture Trail near Matakana, with an impressive piece of land work that can be SEEN FROM A LONG WAY UP. No sign of the pavilion on the lake so the current map must pre-date the official opening of the trail. Not to forget Alan Gibbs' estate on the Kaipara Harbour, which is unfortunately (suspiciously?) OUT OF FOCUS.

The Cass Sculpture Foundation near Goodwood, UK is the model for Brick Bay, but not much that's recognisable to be SEEN FROM ABOVE except the roof of Alex Hartley's Pavilion.

Finally, here's the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Nice to SEE SOME MODERNIST BOXES out in the desert.