WATERSHED+

Artwork of the week
Time Landscape, 1965 - ongoing

Alan Sonfist

Time Landscape is a replanted, pre-colonial forest in the heart of Manhattan. It consists of slowly developing oaks, hickories, junipers, maples, and sassafras, the vegetation growing in this place before the city was settled by Europeans in the 16th century. Planted in 1975, it is accessible only for maintenance.
Time Landscape shifted the framework of the form and function of public art and parks. As a result of this work, New York City Parks and Recreation began to re-examine its own parameters for acceptable landscaping plants.

Artwork of the week

Touched echo, 2007
Markus Wilson

On February 13, 1945, during the final stages of WWII, large air raids by Allied Forces virtually flattened the old town of Dresden. Touched echo takes people right back to that fateful day.
Identifiable only by four small plaques, it is a place of silent contemplation rather than a monumental memorial. By leaning onto the railing of the terrace with the elbows placed on the railing and the hands covering the ears, visitors are able to hear sounds of airplanes and bombs exploding, transported from the railing via bone conduction, a technology developed for hearing devices.
it is completely silent unless you touch the railing.

http://www.markuskison.de/#touched_echo

Artwork of the week

Seascapes, 1980-ongoing
Hiroshi Sugimoto

An ongoing series of photographs of the sea and its horizon, Seascapes, in locations all over the world, using large-format camera to make exposures of varying duration (up to three hours).

Artwork of the week

Turning the Place Over, 2007-2011
Richard Wilson

Turning the Place Over consisted of an 8 metres diameter ovoid cut from the façade of a disused building in Liverpool, England, and made to oscillate in three dimensions.
The revolving part of the façade rested on a specially designed giant rotator, usually used in the shipping and nuclear industries. When at rest the ovoid section of façade would fit flush into the rest of the building. As it rotates, the facade will not only become completely inverted but will also oscillate into the building and out into the street, revealing the interior of the building, and only being flush with the building at one point during its rotation.

Expected to be exhibited only into 2008 it stayed until 2011.

Co-commissioned by the Liverpool Culture Company and Liverpool Biennial

Artwork of the week

Lightning Field, 1977
Walter de Maria

Lightning Field is located in a New Mexico desert at about 200 meters above sea leve!.
400 steel rods placed in a grid-like pattern 220 feet apart so as to form a rectangle of one mile by one kilometer. They are aligned perfectly at the top.

See more information on the Dia Art Foundation site

Artwork of the week

Hudson River Purge, 1991
Buster Simpson

In an effort to heighten public awareness of acid rains Buster Simpson placed numerous hand-carved, soft-chalk limestone tablets, weighing up to fifty pounds, in the headwaters of the Hudson River in New York’s Adirondack Park as temporary “stop-gap” solutions, neutralizing the acidity of water for a limited time (the Adirondack Mountains are an area hard-hit by acid rain).

Artwork of the week

Ghost Ship, 2005
Chris Burden

Commissioned to coincide with the Tall Ships Race, 2005, Ghost Ship involved the construction and development of a crewless, self-navigating sailing boat, which undertook its maiden voyage between Fair Isle, Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne. Audiences were able to track the boats progress via a live, daily updated website.

ARTWORK OF THE WEEK

Big Bubble (1998)
Dean Ruck

The Big Bubble is an interactive artwork in Buffalo Bayou in Houston, Texas.
It is both activated with a timer and a red button on the nearby bridge. “The button itself is up there unannounced, and so it creates a real curiosity to people that come across it – it’s just a red button. Do I push it or don’t I?”.
When the button is pressed, a large bubble rises from the depths of the water and bursts loudly.
It also acts as a device to activate and aerate the slow moving water.

More details here

ARTWORK OF THE WEEK

Shy Fountain (2012)
Simon Faithfull

A fountain that only exists when no-one is there.

Connected to a series of movement sensors, the fountain can only be seen in the distance (particularly at night when lit from below). As soon as the viewer tries to approach, however, the fountain and lights switch off, leaving only the wet stone as a trace of its recent presence. If the viewer stays still, again, the fountain will cautiously reappear… getting progressively higher till it reaches its full height once more.

ARTWORK OF THE WEEK

Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island (1970 - 2005)
Robert Smithson

Likely an homage to Frederick Law Olmsted’s design of Central Park, Floating Island offers a displacement of the park from its natural habitat, instead of the park being encircled by Manhattan, the park could now circle Manhattan.
The island is a further twist on Smithson’s career-long fascination with displacement. This generally meant taking art outdoors and bringing pieces of the land back indoors, into galleries. In the case of Floating Island, the displacement is all outdoors, an exploration of land and water, urban and rural, real and recreated, center and periphery.

Posthumously realized in 2005 from a sketch made in 1970, the island was towed around Manhattan for a week.

See more here

Read the story of the construction in the New York Times: It’s Not Easy Making Art That Floats