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(Location of Site 1 in Dubai, adjacent to a wildlife sanctuary and artificial wetlands under construction.)

Registrations for the Land Art Generator Initiative competition are finally being accepted.

The goal of the competition is to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to thousands of homes.

Note that this is foremost an art competition, meaning “the installations are art first, power plants second. There may need to be sacrifices to be made in terms of efficiency of energy generation in order that the design function primarily on a conceptual and aesthetic level. The objective is not to design and engineer a device that provides the cheapest KWh or the most energy per square meter of land.”

The deadline is June 4, 2010.

(Still from Real Remnants of Fictive Wars V, 2004, one of five films documenting the work of Cyprien Gaillard. Here, on the grounds of an old French château, “a billowing cloud of white smoke erupts from the central tree, infecting its branches with fungal-like spores.”)


(Still from Cyprien Gaillard's Real Remnants of Fictive Wars II, 2004. Here, a similar thick smoke from fire extinguishers bursts out of a tunnel.)

(Le Nôtre as telepresent digging machines. Image by Astrobotic Technology Inc.)

Last week, government and commercial websites in South Korea and the U.S. were targeted with denial-of-service attacks. In the U.S., “[the websites] of the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department were all affected at some point over the weekend and into this week.” And in South Korea, “at least 11 major sites have slowed or crashed since Tuesday [July 7], including those of the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, the mass-circulation newspaper Chosun Ilbo and the top Internet portal Naver.com.”

There is evidence to suggest that the cyberattacks were instigated by North Korea, though a link to the rogue state may never be proven definitively.

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From rogue states or not, from Russia or China, from the domestic front or not, cyberattacks like those of last week are real and significant threats to America's computer network systems. To develop defenses against such online attacks, the U.S. Defense Department has been creating specialized forces. For the Army, there is Army Network Warfare Battalion, which was activated last year. For the Air Force, there is 57th Information Aggressor Squadron, whose hackers “spend their days and nights probing the military’s vast computer networks for weaknesses to exploit” in “a series of inconspicuous trailers” at Nellis Air Force Base. Meanwhile, at West Point and the other federal military academies, cadets can now choose to receive training in cyberwarfare.

“There is hardly an American military unit or headquarters that has not been ordered to analyze the risk of cyberattacks to its mission — and to train to counter them,” wrote the New York Times. “If the hackers were to succeed, they could change information on the network and cripple Internet communications.”

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Also last week, New Scientist reported that the first node in space of the interplanetary internet went online. This newly installed system aboard the [International Space Station] could one day make communication automatic and less prone to data loses between earthbound networks and spacecrafts and astronauts orbiting the earth or in deeper space.


(Image by Astrobotic Technology Inc.)

According to a press release prepared earlier this year by Carnegie Mellon, researchers at the university assisted Astrobotic Technology Inc. in developing conceptual robots capable of preparing lunar landing sites for a future moonbase.

Specifically, these lunar bulldozers would be tasked “to build a berm around a landing site to block the sandblasting effect” of multiple landings and takeoffs. Alternatively, a fleet of “small robots could comb the lunar soil for rocks, gathering them to pave a durable grit-free landing pad.”

It is envisioned that these robots would be sent to the moon in advance of human expeditions. In other words, these telepresent digging machines would be operated from earthbound venues — and thus prone to takeovers from hackers.

Not that that would be easily done. As far as we know, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity haven't yet been commandeered by hackers and programmed to dredge arabesque parterres on the surface of Mars.

Certainly, what would be easy is fantasizing about a rogue landscape architect with previous training in cyberwarfare at the National Security Agency. Because of the financial meltdown, he is between jobs, simmering and festering in soul-draining temp jobs, constantly bombarded by the cackles of gossiping colleagues in adjacent cubicles.

Clearly in need of a creative outlet, he sets up a botnet of thousands of infected computers to try to take control of the moon rovers. He will have to wait, however, until those robots have landed and their calibrations finished to start hacking the servers of NASA and what would then be a greatly expanded interplanetary internet. But once appropriated, he will upload a different set of instructions.

He will program them to terraform a full scale, regolithic Versailles on the surface of the moon.

In the Archives:
Artist-in-Residence-in-Mars

(Also in the works: Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Mastaba: Project for the United Arab Emirates.)

At the moment, there are no project sites, no deadlines, no jury and no sponsors to announce, let alone what coming in first place will mean, either receiving a cash prize or a commission or both. But if and when the logistics are properly set up, Land Art Generator Initiative could be a fascinating competition to follow.

From the project statement, emphasis theirs:

The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations in the United Arab Emirates that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to up to 50,000 homes in the UAE.

How about a frozen desert artificially gouged with wind-damned canyons?

There is a blog, bLAGI, in which you can check for any updates.

(Boulder timeline. All images courtesy of the Annely Juda Fine Art Gallery.)

Beginning in 1978, when a spherical chunk of oak got lodged in a stream as he was moving it to his studio, the sculptor David Nash has documented its long riverine journey.

“For 25 years,” Nash writes, “I have followed its engagement with the weather, gravity and the seasons. It became a stepping-stone into the drama of physical geography. Spheres imply movement and initially I helped it to move, but after a few years I observed it only intervening when absolutely necessary - when it became wedged under a bridge.”







The journey is so extraordinary — made more so perhaps by the fact that it's so well-documented — that we can't help but quote the rest of Nash's accounts:

During the first 24 years it moved down stream nine times remaining static for months and years. Sedentary and heavy it would sit bedded in stones animated by the varying water levels and the seasons. Beyond the bridge its position survived many storms, the force of the water spread over the shallow banks did not have the power to shift it. I did not expect it to move into the Dwyryd river in my lifetime.

Then in November 2002 it was gone. The 'goneness' was palpable. The storm propelled the boulder 5 kilometres, stopping on a sandbank in the Dwryd estuary. Now tidal, it became very mobile. The high tides around full moon and the new moon moved it every 12 hours to a new place, each placement unique to the consequence of the tide, wind, rain and depth of water.

In January 2003 it disappeared from the estuary but was found again in a marsh. An incoming tide had taken it up a creek, where it stayed for five weeks. The equinox tide of March 19 2003 was high enough to float it back to the estuary where it continued its movement back and forth 3 or 4 kilometres each move.

The wooden boulder was last seen in June 2003 on a sandbank near Ynys Giftan. All creeks and marshes have been searched so it can, only be assumed it has made its way to the sea. It is not lost. It is wherever it is.

Obviously we know what has happened to it — it's been scooped up by a reclusive oil tycoon to adorn his secret garden like a pilfered Grecian kore. Resting on a pedestal, accumulating monetary value, periodically acting the part of a showpiece to entertain guests.







It would be unsurprising to hear someone remark that the boulder is at the mercy of the elements, although we're more apt to say that it is the river that is at the mercy of this artifact, under the weight of human agency, and of Nash's relentless gaze and choreographic machinations.

The river turned into a Picturesque folly; the passing of time, the same physical forces that smooth out rocks and bend rivers turned into a constructed view.

(Spotted at Some landscapes and then later at Topophilia.)