filed under the category of conceptual work that i’ve been thinking about for a long time | part II

Filed in a subfolder titled “Absurdist Notions of Grandiose Proportions”

site from an altitude of 75 miles

I have always been fond of absurdist art, along the lines of Claes Oldenburg’s proposed monument for the intersection of Canal St. and Broadway, a giant block of concrete inscribed with the names of war heroes, or his design for a tunnel entrance in the form of a nose. I also seem to remember a conceptual piece for a war memorial by someone I can’t think of at the moment, that was a large, shallow, concave surface with a very deep hole in the center.

claes oldenburg, 1965

I’ve had the idea of an earthwork that is a bar code since the early 90s, and I'm sure others have had the same thought, but after some Google image searches I haven’t been able to see any others. If anyone knows of another, please let me know. Here is the basic idea...

 


















 

site from an altitude of 10 miles, choice of barcode is from cigarette package

 

area is north of I-80 (you can see it as the angled line at the bottom left of the image)
and west of the Great Salt Lake.

 

area selected is a mile-and-a-half by a mile

 

each bar would be dug from the earth, and be approx. six feet deep.

 

this place is flat — according geospatial data in Google Earth,
the elevation changes only two feet at the most

the shadows cast from the furrows, according to data in SketchUp
for my current latlong, would create the full barcode
prior to 8 a.m. and after 3:30 p.m. for this date, November 12.

Earthworks by others currently in progress

black mesa / az

near gillette / wy

jonah field / wy

navajo reservoir / nm

round mountain / nv