Artists represent the ephemeral with their craft. At Planet, our engineers capture it with our spacecraft.
Earthworks—otherwise Earth or Land art—the movement spun out of late ’60s to mid ’70s Conceptualism scene, as a chiefly North American means to divorce sculptural forms from what was felt as the implicit consumerism of museums. Namely: artists were frustrated with the “pay-to-play” limitations found in galleries. Earthworks projects, instead, looked to return the artifice to a cost-free landscape.
At Planet, our small sat spacecraft zip around the Earth every 90 minutes, capturing imagery along the way, allowing our users to witness change at a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. While this maintains practical and business implications tracking agriculture yields, hedging on import/exports, or observing the undeniable effects of climate change, one can also view these artists’ attempt to draw meaning from an ever ever-changing medium: the earth.
Take Roden’s Crater. Built as an oasis from populous light pollution, James Turrell’s installation within a volcanic cinder cone provides its visitors the experience of star gazing in a controlled, isolated environment.
From within, the work offers its audience a contemplation on light and space among a shifting, desolate landscape. A series of tunnels, lend a peaceful walk through the geology of the red and ashy feature itself.
More than 30 miles from Flagstaff, Arizona, getting to the crater will take visitors a little more than an hour drive. Experiencing Turrell’s masterpiece will take longer, however, as the construction is on-going and—as such—not open to the public (though, one can always donate and help support their endeavors).
Six thousand miles away on the western coast of Sicily visitors are encouraged to tour Cretto di Burri for a different sort of contemplation.
Italian for “the Crack of Burri,” the piece is a city-wide concrete mausoleum to the lives and homes lost from the earthquake of Belize on January 14, 1968. Although the city relocated after the devastating 5.5 magnitude quake, artist Alberto Burri poured concrete atop the former town blocks. The monument’s resulting surface area totals 1.3 million square feet.
In a gesture to the moment of loss, the mayor at the time asked of Burri:
“To translate for the present generation and for future generations the tragedy, the struggle, the hope and the faith.” (c/o Jonathan Keats of Forbes Magazine)
The old alleyways and roads remain preserved, however, allowing visitors to walk alongside the streets that once welcomed families.
If you can’t make it to Sicily anytime soon, you can view it using Google Maps’ 360º view.
Meanwhile back in the western hemisphere a piece of art, characterized by over 40 years of work, a signature piece of legislation by former Senator Harry Reid, and countless tons of Nevadan soil — Michael Heizer’s work, City — sets out to be “a monument to outlast humanity.”
Heizer—a Berkeley son—began this monumental abstract ceremonial landscape in 1972. Thanks to President Obama, Senator Harry Reid, and fifteen years of work by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art director, Michael Govan, the Basin and Range National Monument proclamation protects Heizer’s defining work and the surrounding 704,000 acres.
Stretching more than a quarter of a mile wide, Heizer’s abstract conception is inspired chiefly by his studies of Yucatan’s, Chichen Itza. With its sprawling layout and sharp pyramid-like sloping mounds, there’s a solemn appearance of the human hand in processing the earth. At its slated completion in 2020, City will be the largest sculpture in history.
“What Michael Heizer has done is about as visionary as anything that one can imagine. It’ll be there for a long time. It’s going to be there forever.” Senator Harry Reid (c/o Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times)
Come 2020, Mission 1 will be long completed. Our doves will keep track on the ceaseless tumult the Earth bears on these landscapes. In the meantime, we patiently wait for these testaments to time to be completed.
