Detroit has a Stargate?
It does, but it only takes you to Cairo, IL.
A freakin’ stargate! How did we not know this?
So great to see David Barr on Boing Boing! He founded Michigan Legacy Art Park in northern Michigan and I was lucky enough to get to know him. Here is a video story they did on his amazing artistic career: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpKYregnbfo
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This project was echoed in David Brin’s /Earth/.
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Wow, before GPS!
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Greenland polar ice cap, too bad, huh?
he and the timecube guy should have collaborated.
Reminds me of an art professor I had
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2005/11/frank_smullin_a.html
Google Earth KML
In addition to this one, Ze Frank’s The Earth as a Sandwich covers similar ground. Which has got me wondering, what about a cube? Or an octahedron? What’s the fewest number of deep ocean points necessary for each platonic solid?
anansi133 reminded me of The Earth as a Sandwich, which is definitely the funniest variant of this idea.
The thing I’m wondering about is how he funded this project. I like this particular project. It’s pretty neat. It’s original. It’s a conceptual project, but done by a man with technical skill, which makes a big difference in my mind. It’s also pretty resistant to “vandalism as art”* (I’m not referring to graffiti).
One thing about the art world that fascinates me is the politics of it, though. Patronage and salesmanship. This project was a great excuse to travel. I wonder who paid for it.
Any conceptual piece tends to remind me of other conceptual pieces by people lacking the technical skills to do anything else. *Remember that guy whose whole schtick was taking other people’s sculptures and draping them in cloth and ropes? That’s all he did, and I’ve heard of him! I went to MOMA in New York and saw some amazing work, along with an entire suite of canvases painted with a single color. The “red” painting, and so on. Uninspired concepts with uninspiring results, from born politicians who insisted on being artists instead (hah, imagine if Hitler had been less technically proficient as a painter).
This video was a little woo-ey, but it seems David Barr was one of the good ones. He created some amazing pieces, and did something hard for his big conceptual piece, which I respect. Sorry to only be hearing about him now.
You get a good view and can see them planting one at at this time on the video. I think they showed it a few other times as well.
Many thanks! Here’s some screen shots from the Barr Legacy & In celebration: the four corners project
“Does this stargate go to uptown?”
Anyway, I wonder how long it took/will take for the “tetrahedron’s” points to drift out of alignment, (if it hasn’t already).
Depends what counts as “alignment”. What is the tolerance required for the thing to work?
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