Final Project: The Improbable Monument

For my improbable monument, I was inspired by the Nazca lines of the Peruvian high plains. The lines are hundreds of meters long and can really only be seen at an elevation of 300 feet or more overhead. These lines are over 1,500 years old and were basically unknown to the rest of the world until they were discovered by western researchers in South America while flying overhead in airplanes during the 1930‘s.

My idea is to create modern versions of these lines in an urban setting. The lines in Peru are primarily simplistic geometric representations of the natural world that surrounded the people who created them. Birds, monkeys, plants, reptiles, spiders. These were largely universal elements in these people’s daily life 1,500 years ago. Today, mankind has gone on to discover so much more within the same world, and I want to update this concept with universal symbolic language that can potentially last another 1,500 years (or more).

The creative difficulty mostly came from deciding what kind of images to choose for my project. I was able to collaborate with my classmates Jerry and Stephanie to brainstorm and refine my current idea. I threw out a bunch of ideas and they helped me decide which were more universal, relevant, and comprehendible to the greatest potential number of people. I decided that I wanted to show progression in human development from the primitive times of the creation of the original lines. The people who made those lines were very much more in tune with the natural world that surrounded them. Their entire understanding of their daily world was likely reflected in those line drawings on the ground. So I wanted to display something that speaks to people in our world, in our time. These new designs are not meant merely to complement and reference the old lines- but to contrast and push beyond them. The most basic elements that I decided to touch on were: Technology, Science, and Music.

Technology is one of the foundations of human evolution. We measure the early progression of our own race by the technologies we were governed by. Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age. The middle ages and beyond have abandoned this naming structure, but are no less reliant on their technology as their defining characteristics. The enlightenment ignited with the printing press and lead to advancements in the areas of philosophy, mathematics, government, etc. The industrial revolution practically speaks for itself. Humans have largely progressed through technological advancements made in agriculture, in weapons, and in transportation. From domestication of animals, to the wheel, to combustion engines and beyond. I decided that an airplane would be an appropriate modern design that is understandable, representative of technology (the shrinking of our modern world), and represented a major advancement in technology through the use of many technological innovations leading up to its initial creation and how it’s continued to change the course of human history and has enabled the world to be brought together in so many new ways.

The idea of science is kind of all encompassing, and it’s something that largely hadn’t been developed and explored by many cultures 1,500 years ago (or maybe had been- but had been all but forgotten by the collapse of these cultures). Our world today is built upon a foundation of gradually amassed scientific understanding and I wanted to do something that encompassed newer scientific arenas such as medicine and chemistry. I chose to go with a simple image of an atom. The atom is widely understood to be one of the most foundational building blocks of all matter and it’s something that our human culture has learned to harness in the time since the ancient people of Peru.

I chose Music as the final image. I wanted to do something with art- but since the original Nazca lines are already pretty advanced, representational 2D images, I wasn’t sure exactly how to properly illustrate advancements in the arts. It’s a complex and aesthetical concern, so I thought of more universal kinds of art and realized that music has grown and advanced so much as a universal art form in the time since the original Nazca lines were created. Music back then was largely rhythmic/percussive and they likely hadn’t developed instruments with complex note scales. Today, almost every country (including Peru) has traditional music made with string instruments. It’s a beautiful kind of expression that can cross all language barriers and has the power to unite us all as human beings. I went with a flying V guitar just because it has an iconic shape and a pretty, geometric design that is very much in tune with my other two illustrations.


I chose to place these giant lines around our fair city, and after much consideration, I chose my own neighborhood: the Sunset. There are a number of reasons for this: first of all- it’s the largest, and most level portion of the city. It also doesn’t have any high rise buildings or structures which might obstruct the view or the construction of this project. The flat grid would be probably the easiest place to create these monuments, and would make the mapping and advanced planning much easier. Each block is about 80 meters wide by about 270 meters long so that should give you a pretty good idea of how large these images will be. I figure that using reflective road paint would be the most reasonable way to make these markings. Some of them would take up the entire width of some streets, and these lines would naturally have to cover some houses from the roofs to the sides and all around.

This is probably what makes the project so improbable, of course. The cost alone would be a massive undertaking. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of reflective road paint can’t be cheap- and likewise, the city would probably insist on overseeing the construction, so there would be a lot of labor involved. There are also legal ramifications in the form of property owners rights and inevitable resistance from people who resent having their streets and homes painted over. It would almost certainly cost hundreds of millions of dollars- if not over a billion dollars to clear this project through to completion since it would be created amidst the citizens of this city. I think when it’s completed, though- it could be something truly spectacular. Visible by flying overhead in airplanes (or perhaps someday in flying cars!) this could be a permanent and unique monument to our times and could last into the future of all humanity.

Reading Response: Seeing the Past in Present Tense

This was a really cool article. I found it to be a very informative account of the potential dangers or side effects that monuments can have on how a society will continue to look back on historical events as time marches on.

Especially monuments that directly tie to location-based history. The idea of a metaphorical detour is a very interesting way of explaining the potential uses of monuments, but in the way it can reshape history in the eye of the beholder is kind of scary, in my opinion. The example of the Emancipation Monument and how it serves to flatten and alter our common historical understanding is not really doing citizens a service. It would probably shock 90% of Americans to learn that Abe Lincoln didn't actually emancipate slaves as a statement toward civil rights and equality- but instead only as a way to confuse the south, drum up support for the Union forces and help them win the war. The fact that the emancipation proclamation only freed the confederate slaves (and the confederates didn't recognize laws passed in the Union) while still leaving slavery legal in the Union would probably lead most to think you were either playing a joke on them or make them outright angry.

The story about the Monument Against War, Fascism, and Violence in Germany was another interesting story about how monuments can fail to achieve their goal if they are designed to disappear from the public consciousness. The fact that this monument had been forgotten in less than 20 years from its creation is kind of disappointing and the fact that the only people who seemed to notice it at all were the people who were intent on defacing it. Designing an effective monument seems like a balancing act between over-simplifying an idea or message to the point that it leaves viewers with a misunderstanding of the historical event being memorialized and making a monument that is too easily forgotten or overlooked by the public it's intended to serve.

For my monument, I intend to make a much broader and simplified message. I don't want to reference a single historical event- I am striving to make something that is universally understood by as many people as possible, with no words- just simple graphics that describe modern human concerns.

Outside Event 3

The opportunity to see a large body of work by one of the most recognized artists of the past 100 years is rare for most people. When the artist happens to be Pablo Picasso, it’s reason for even the most jaded art enthusiast to take notice. The exhibition, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musee National Picasso, Paris was recently showing at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco. It was part of a traveling tour that began in 2008 of roughly 150 original works by famous 20th century artist, Pablo Picasso. Stopping at various museums around the world, this collection-- on loan from the Musee National Picasso, in Paris-- boasts a huge number of paintings from every period of the famed artist’s nearly eighty year career.
One of the most interesting aspects of this particular show was that Picasso was one of the most prolific artists of the last century- and as innovative as his famously faceted cubist paintings were- they were only representative of a small percentage of his artistic output over the course of eight decades. From early sketches, to late-career sculptures and everything in between. Famous wartime painting “The Weeping Woman” (1930) represents one of his more well-known cubist works included in the exhibition, complete with angular lines (to illustrate volume), contorted facial features, eyeballs practically sitting on top of each other, and adorned with paisley-shaped tears. This contrasts dramatically with equally famous Blue Period portrait “La Celestine” (1904) with it’s monochromatic, realistic rendering of an old woman in a hooded cape with a massive cataract covering one eye. And yet further into the exhibit, another well-known, minimal work in black and white, “The Acrobat” (1930) shows an almost comically exaggerated pose of a nude contortionist. And elsewhere one can view early studies for “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) which was one of Picasso’s earliest paintings that foreshadowed the future development of cubism.
Of course the drawbacks to such an expansive collection of a single artist’s work are varied: such as trading quality for quantity. As big and comprehensive as this collection is: I would gladly trade the opportunity to see about a quarter of some of these paintings, rough sketches, and studies in exchange for a chance to see the massive “Guernica” (1937) which can be seen in Spain, or the finished “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon“ painting- which lives at the MoMA in New York. Now obviously, this isn’t possible since this exhibition represents only part of a collection from a single museum in Paris, but it also illustrates another missed opportunity: with such a huge collection of work from a single artist (shown chronologically from earliest to latest), it’s hard to fully comprehend the scope of work by this master of European modernism without comparing and contrasting this work to his contemporaries’ work at similar moments in history.
The exhibition itself, is unfortunately not optimized for such a small space. In it’s short 4-month stay, this exhibit was surely visited by hundreds of thousands of eager museum-goers. Needless to say, the exhibit was constantly overcrowded by a steady stream of visitors from open to close, day-in and day-out. The collection of work could have benefited from more room to be observed by such large crowds, not to mention the opportunity to provide more informational placards near the paintings for more thorough explanations- of course this would have been a missed opportunity for the museum to obnoxiously push it’s overpriced audio tours onto the curious public. Equally irritating is the way in which the tour inevitably ends up in a gift shop which sells refrigerator notepads and mouse pads with images of Picasso paintings on them for $10 each. Overlooking these avoidable (or unavoidable in some cases) shortcomings, the exhibit was generally well presented and certainly provided a rare opportunity to view a large number of works by Pablo Picasso for a much more reasonable price than a trip to Europe would cost.
The modernist obsession with the new, and the inevitability of obsolescence is perfectly illustrated in this chronological presentation. The linear march of artistic progress, the birth of new ideas at the expense of the death of old ideals seems to be an underlying theme of the show. As much as he constantly looked forward, Picasso seldom looked back. Revisiting the old never seemed to be a concern for him, perhaps more so than any other modernist. Whether it was modernism’s greatest strength or it’s greatest weakness, perhaps no other painter of the last century represented this idea as thoroughly (or as enduringly) as Pablo Picasso.

Outside Event 2

I went to see the Bristol experimental trip-hop band "Portishead" at the Berkeley Greek Theater in late October. It was a phenomenal performance by one of my favorite bands, who are very much reliant on technology for their signature sound: drum machines, samplers, vintage analog keyboards, and scratch turntables.

But what really made the show memorable was the fantastic visual presentation. Unlike most big rock concerts- Portishead play mellower, subdued, hypnotic electronic music and since there isn't really a "front" person in the band, their stage presence is kind of underplayed with minimal stage lights and is instead back-lit by a gigantic LED screen. This screen plays grainy footage and strange camera effects for much of the show and makes the band look like a haunting gang of black ghosts in the foreground.

It wasn't until the gritty, digitally-decayed footage of drums and cymbals and guitars that accompanied the opening notes of the song "Hunter" that i started to understand what was going on with the awesome visuals. There were two young men off to the side of the main stage who would occasionally run out and touch what appeared to be mounted digital cameras. I quickly realized that this is exactly what they were doing. I also noticed that there wasn't just one digital camera- there were nearly 20 of them surround every member of the band on stage. The footage was being edited, looped, visually treated/manipulated and screened in real time. When guitarist Adrian Utley bent down to change a guitar effects pedal- his image followed in perfect time on the screen only there appeared to be about a hundred of him in a row. These effects kind of resembled the cheezy in-camera effects utilized in early video editing, music videos, and cable-access commercials in the 80's and early 90's.

And yet, the entire effect was really impressive looking and very much stylized. The video artists had obviously been doing this kind of thing for a long time and their unique visual style was an important (and consistently stylish) part of the entire show. I had a hard time finding good footage of the video at the Berkeley show- but they had the same kind of video editing at work during the performance of this same song earlier in the tour at their England "All Tomorrow's Parties" music festival performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPsi6QcFs6U&feature=related

keep in mind that at the Berkeley show they played on a much larger and much darker stage, and their LED screen was about twice as big as the one in this video. It really made for a surreal and unusual-looking performance. The videos had a cold, deteriorated, security camera-quality to their appearance and it greatly enhanced the entire experience.

outside event 1

Earlier this semester I went to a presentation by my friend Aaron Rietz at Oddball Films. The show was called "Yesterday's Futures: Creeping Technology & The Dawn of Computer Graphics" a collection of short CG films from the 1970's through the early 1980's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7h0ppnUQhE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2kd1B0Ybto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44i05aaoXN4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44i05aaoXN4&feature=related

It was actually a really fascinating event. People always look back on the Disney film "Tron" as the first CGI, when in fact- it was the culmination of over 15 years of prior CGI work pioneered by artists such as John Whitney and Robert Abel. In fact, Robert Abel contributed to the CG work on "Tron".

There were several films presented at the event (including Whitney's "Arabesque" posted above)- most of which aren't available on Youtube, but I have attempted to corral a few videos from online to illustrate what kind of films were collected for this interesting and impressive video exhibition.

I've always been fascinated by the possibilities of computer animation, and I still think that some of these early CGI creations are some of the most beautiful, inspirational and innovative advancements in modern art.

*edit: I just noticed that my youtube videos aren't showing up as videos on my blog. I'll try to fix them later- until then, please highlight them and follow to the addresses listed to look at the videos :)

Final Project Proposal Ideas 2(: Electric Boogaloo)

I had another monumental idea ;)
Inspired by the re-worked, anarchitectural building designs of Gordon Matta-Clark

I thought it would be cool to use an entire building as a work of art. Instead of chopping it up to make a comment on architecture, though- i would like to make a comment on perhaps a different kind of universal human concern.

I was thinking about impermanence and perhaps the environment. I found an amazing collection of photographs of old, overgrown houses by James D. Griffioen. I have always been intrigued by these houses whenever I see them- but it was a fantastic idea to collect them so thoughtfully. He calls this series "Feral Houses"

Anyway, I thought that maybe a building or structure could be constructed with the intention of watching it slowly corrode over time. It would be interesting to watch a man-made structure be reclaimed by nature over the course of multiple generations. part of the project would be to photograph the gradual dilapidation of the structure and also to maintain and upkeep the area surrounding it; a contrasting surrounding environment of well groomed gardens and sturdy, clean buildings would make the project especially interesting. There is a conceptual element of randomness built into the project in both the unpredictable nature in which the land and plants will reclaim the building, and also in the unpredictable way in which society will grow or shrink or utilize the surrounding land. It's an exciting idea to me that I would like to maybe explore in my final project for this class.

Final Project Proposal Ideas

So one of my ideas for an improbable monument is to make an image of massive scale on the ground. I was inspired by the Nazca lines in the high Peruvian plains. Believed to be around 1,500 years old- they weren't discovered until the 1930's when researchers were able to view them from airplanes. These line drawings on the ground resemble various animals and from the ground are almost invisible; they look like little more than winding paths. They only start to become visible from a height of at least 300 feet in the air (or more). This idea appeals to me for several reasons. For one thing: I'm coming from a more traditional art background of drawing and painting, so I could more easily use my talents in drawing to apply to this unique project. Another reason is that I have always loved those ancient Nazca lines- they are beautiful, mysterious and technologically impressive considering that they were developed by a primitive culture by the standards of western civilization at the time, yet they have managed to last for several centuries- and remained undiscovered for over a thousand years. Finally, the concept makes for a perfect fit in the improbable monument project- considering that the lines have lasted for so long, and the unique idea of only being visible from an unusual perspective. The original line drawings are over 600 feet across, so they would be a good fit in a large public park, like Golden Gate Park, or maybe a large golf course or even a nature preserve. I haven't yet figured out what I would make the image of (a monument to what??) but as a general concept- I think this is a pretty strong idea to work from.