In View

Opening Ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics - (Athens, Greece) . . . . "

Introducing Virtual Environments - What are virtual environments? Computer visualization is reshaping how scientists evaluate and explore their data and promises to transform how students learn. Within the past four decades, dramatic advances in graphic display and high-end computing have made it possible to transform billions of bits of data into interactive, three-dimensional images that you can manipulate in real time. Here, all the display and feedback devices that make this possible are collectively termed "Virtual Environments. " [History, Technology, Applications, Frontiers - A Prensentation of the National Center for Supercomputing]

The Un-private House - "The evolving cultural definition of the private house generates significant opportunities for architectural invention." [Museum of Modern Art]

Peter Halley - "An installation by American artist Peter Halley consisting of paintings displayed against a background of wall drawings, and wallpaper-format prints . . . . Halley aims to make paintings that have an immediate and explosive visual impact through scale, hard-edged form and colour. Day-Glo and acrylic paints and areas of stucco texture are used to create subtle or brilliant effects. The rectilinear compositions recall Newman, Mondrian and Albers. Halley's work is not abstract, however, but has a figurative basis. His starting point is a conception of geometry as a metaphor for society. The elements of his iconography are rectangular cell units, linked by linear conduits, which represent the individual organisms and networks of contemporary urban existence. The paintings are depictions of the social landscape, of isolation and connectivity, and this sociological theme extends to his work in other media. " [Waddington Gallery Installation>- UK]

Kawara - "Over the past quarter century Kawara has adopted a variety of formats for his various on-going series of works including, amongst others, postcards, telegrams and street plans as well as paintings. Whilst such continuing series as I Met, I Went, and I Read, tabulate in the form of simple lists the contingencies of his daily experience, others, notably the postcards I Got Up, two of which have been sent each day for years to different recipients introduce by means of their medium a note of playfulness and informality slyly masking the metaphysical import of their messages. . . . . Kawara speaks at once to the creation of chronological time, to duration, and to history, all anthropomorphic concepts which by means of the integer of a day and the larger unit of a year provide the principal and most fundamental terms in which existence is measured. In reviewing the changing installations over the course of this exhibition the visitor will necessarily return on different days, to encounter the recordings of yet other days, and to hear intoned the names of years in a future that is otherwise unlikely to be directly experienced. If the transience of existence is one of the principal subjects in Kawara's aesthetic the relentlessness of time's passage is equally another." [Lynne Cooke - On Kawara: One Thousand Days One Million Years, Dia center for the arts. January 1-December 31, 1993]

Predictive Engineering2 - "Julia Scher's installation piece appropriating security technologies to deliver a cautionary narrative of complacency in today's world of digital technologies and telepresence." [San Francisco Museum of Modern Art] [Nolonger available]

SuperThrive - "Stephen Hendee combines the natural with the virtual, producing structures that inspire awe in the viewer. Outlined in black electrical tape that recalls the leading in stained glass windows, the surprisingly translucent skin of the backlit foam board panels casts a soft glow that shapes an unexpected place of solace. Angled geometric bends extend from floor to ceiling, creating pockets of light and shadow that physically enclose the viewer. Hendee describes this effect as creating "a feeling of suspended time and isolation. You can be inside these pieces and feel like you are alone." Captivated by these majestic structures, viewers will be startled by the realization that they are crafted from ordinary disposable materials." [Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX]

QUOTE: "If the staged towers of Mugheir, Tello and Abu Shahrein, are too much destroyed for us to be able to restore their different steps except in thought, we are sure, nevertheless, that these old Chaldæn edifices were similar to the towers the lower stories of which were excavated at Kouyunjik, Nimroud, Khorsabad, and finally at Babylon, where stood, from the remotest antiquity, the two famous temples called E-saggil and E-zida and where Nebuchadnezzar built, according to the testimony of his inscriptions, the famous Tower of the Seven Lights. . . . .

"At the summit of the ascent," he says, "Semiramis placed three golden statues wrought with the hammer." These statues were perhaps in the interior of the sanctuary which generally crowned the building; everything makes it probable also that little chapels were constructed at each stage in the thickness of the structure, and that each of them was consecrated to the stellar deity of whom the colour of the stage was emblematic.

The chapel on the summit was covered by a gilded cupola, which glittered under the glorious sunlight of the pure eastern sky, and dazzled all beholders. Nebuchadnezzar relates in his inscriptions that he overlaid the dome of the sanctuary of Bel Marduk "with plates of wrought gold so that it shone like the day.' . . . . these sanctuaries erected on the top of staged towers, in which the priests passed the night in watching the courses of the stars . . . ." [from the chapter on Assyrian Architecture - [Babelon, Ernest. Librarian of the Department of Medals an Antiques in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Manual of Oriental Antiquities, including the Architecture, Sculptcure, and Industrial Arts of Chald�aa, Assyria, Persia, Syria, Juda�, Ph�nicia, and Carthage. London: H. Grevel and Co. 1906.]

NOTE: The participation fundamental to installing something --whether it's a mood or story, a new refridgedaire, citadel, reflective pool, office space, sculpture, overhead lights, or a window . . . . is generous. Responsiveness has a keen place. And, generally, it's a good idea to consider whether or not this is something you will want to share with others.

The Work Featured Above: - "On September 9, 1976 Christo and Jeanne-Claude unveiled Running Fence. The 18.5 foot high curtain/fence of fabric was more than 20 miles long, stretching from the small inland town of Cotati, California through hills, pastures and trees to the Pacific Ocean 24.5 miles away. [The Coast Crew - Running Fence . . . . This crew was working very hard to get the buckets up and over the undersea blockade. Work was aggravated by the tension in the air created by the 1,000 yard limit." ( Photo: Adam Kazimir Ciesielski)