Subject:  Viridian Note 00037:  Viridian Commentary

Key concepts:  Andy Goldsworthy, weather violence, 
landscape transformation, California citrus disaster of 
1998, flaming rain forests of Mexico, Danish wind power

Attention Conservation Notice:  Over 1,600 words, with 
many abrupt topic changes.  Viridian Commentary is 
ruthlessly edited by list moderator.  Contains many 
undigested links.   Who are these Viridian people?  They 
could be anybody, even you.  Except... wait a minute... 
they all have little stars by their names.

Links:  
The Vestas Danish wind power company
http://www.vestas.dk/
http://www.vestas.com/index_welcome_uk.html

Danish Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association:
http://www.windpower.dk/core.htm

Svend Auken, Danish Minister of Energy and the 
Environment:
http://www.mem.dk/auken/ukindex.htm

Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest:
http://members.aol.com/stjude/
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/
http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html

From:   dlandry@rohan.sdsu.edu^^* (D. Landry)

D. Landry remarks:

Out here in California, an El Nino inspired frost, 
combined with a late growing season due to El Nino storms 
earlier in the year, have spelled disaster for our citrus 
crop.

Fact:  Over 80% of navel oranges (the kind you eat, not 
the juice type) grown in the U.S. are grown in California.

Fact:  Over 90% of lemons in the U.S. are grown in 
California.

Fact:  Over half of our oranges, and almost all of our 
lemons,  froze and are inedible, a huge chunk of 
California's giant agricultural industry.

Soon to be Fact:  Table oranges in the USA are going to 
cost 2-4 times what they did last week, for at least a 
full year, unless we start importing produce, a very 
unlikely prospect.

What does this event mean for Viridians?

Well, first off, it's one more thing to chalk up to our 
deteriorating climate, and a final blow of expensive 
weather violence in an awful year.

    Second, Joe Average may soon join the scientists in 
realizing that we're screwed.  This hits Americans where 
it hurts....not in the lungs like smog, not in the quality 
of life, but right in the pocket book.  Henceforth even 
Californians will be paying around $1.00/LBS for table 
fruit.  The lettuce, avocado, and strawberry crops have 
also taken a hit.  When you witness foot-long icicles 
hanging from lemon trees, in Central California farmland, 
you don't need much more rhetoric about weather change.

(((bruces remarks:  Can anyone offer us good online 
pictures of these California icicles?)))

     Californian farmers will be recovering for several 
years before they're back on their feet financially. 
(Assuming, that is, that weather violence in future 
doesn't hit them again and again.)

    How do we use this event as Viridians?

    We might create satirical or inspirational art, 
regarding frost-bedevilled and genetically mutated citrus 
fruits.  Ideally, this would be printed on sports bottles 
(for lemonade), orange peelers, breakfast cups, fruit 
baskets/hangers, and similar food related paraphernalia, 
preferably made from Viridian-approved recycled materials.  
Personally, I'd be willing to donate $5 or so to buy a few 
pounds of oranges.

    We might appeal to farmers, and gain some allies in a 
profession where people have been preoccupied with weather 
for the last four millennia.

     The people hardest hit by this are going to be farm 
owners, many of them corporate.   And the California farm 
workers, many of whom are migrant laborers, with little or 
no access to media, sensors, or even education, much less 
any bent towards environmental activism. 

     It's hard to find a glamorous and upbeat aspect to 
this. 

(((Courage my brother:  these crazed anomalies are 
happening to me, you, and to people all over the world, 
urban/rural, rich/poor, online/offline.  That's the upbeat 
angle:  the lash may strike, but the beast will move.)))

From: whiz@ricochet.net^^^** (Michael Treece)

Your Holiness-Majesty:

More downsides of the wind-power notion:

1.  Here in Northern California, we have an awesome wind 
farm in the Altamont Pass.  It's just never turned on.  
Quite apart from the damage it does to birds (including 
threatened raptors), the utility companies have done their 
best to ruin it by deferring scheduled maintenance and 
making spare parts rare and dear.  Maybe large and 
centralized isn't the way to go; this might be a job for 
the off-the-grid kids.

2.  The only way Royal Dutch Shell is going to participate 
in this project is if it kills Nigerians.  Work that angle 
out, and they're all yours. 

(((bruces remarks: I have every confidence that people 
will end up getting killed over wind power if it's 
deployed and handled properly.  As for the bird problem, 
let's compare a forest of flying blades to giant broken 
oil tankers.)))

From: MICHAEL.HARTLEY@one2one.co.uk*  (Michael Hartley)

Season's greetings from England, currently bathing in CO2 
fuelled winter storms.

I've been following Andy Goldsworthy's work here in the 
UK. Some of his tide pool works were done on the coast 
just a few miles from my home town. As I type this, 
there's a Goldsworthy postcard in the 'geekosphere' of 
found objects which surrounds my desk. This postcard 
attracts more astonished questions than any of my other 
junk. 

You ask:  "Does the world require more than one artist who 
wants to place wet flower petals on rocks?"

     Why be an 'artist'?  Goldsworthy's work inspires me 
with its use of freely available, natural media and its 
simple hands-on techniques. Granted, it's Goldsworthy's 
talent to produce something with visual appeal and 
originality, but it's really only a matter of getting out 
there into your garden, park, beach, opening up your own 
imagination and putting something together.

     Maybe it's impossible to "make dozens of art careers 
out of coloring tide pools green," but given its 
accessibility, why should this art involve careerism?

    "How big could it be?  Suppose you were given a giant 
abandoned strip mine..."

    I live next door to an abandoned railway line, which 
has recently been transformed into a bicycle track.   
(Recreational bicycles "eat what they kill" in replacing 
dead industrial steam-trains, a very Viridian situation.) 
Every so often, I set out for the day to make/plant 
something on the abandoned line or in the wooded areas 
close by.  My main stuff (not good enough to call them 
'pieces'!)  is reclaimed bits of old railway hardware 
interwoven with bracken (decaying) and ivy (growing). I 
also do a bit of "guerrilla planting:"  find a bit of 
waste land, and introduce plants which are... 
different....... to those already there.

  See also:

http://www.sculpture.org.uk/archive/goldherd.html

for the Goldworthy installation  "Herd of Arches." What I 
find interesting here is Goldworthy's use of housing stone 
in a work which echoes architectural forms, set in the 
background of an abandoned quarry.

On the subject of decaying industrial aesthetics:

Carhenge: installation art using scrapped cars sited in a 
cornfield in western Nebraska, off US 385

http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/Staff/Eve/carhenge.html
http://tom.gunter.com/onvacation/carhenge.html
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jredders/carhenge.html
http://www.srv.net/~jonwot/placespix.html
http://www.frankwu.com/carhenge4.html
http://212.net/carhenge/carhenge.htm

http://www.ground.com/ 
(This uses carhenge imagery as cultural icon)

http://www.roadway.com/offroad_2_june.html 
(carhenge imagery exploited by a trucking company)

http://metalab.unc.edu/sito/MASS/Merriman_C/animation.html 
(A Macromind Projector animation of the rise and fall of 
Carhenge, Alliance, Nebraska)

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/OVERhenges.html 
(Other henges, worth  a look as modern interpetation of 
age old works)


More on the theme of  "What does a bio/post/industrial 
landscape look like when you put the profit motive aside?"

Anti-road art protesters destroying roadbeds:
http://www.gn.apc.org/rts/sp'96/newsp.htm

     I quote:  "Go back to the pantomime dame in pink 
fluff. Under cover of the techno music is a steely noise. 
Under cover of the skirts is something quite other; four 
men and a pneumatic drill are digging up the motorway and 
planting trees. It is the spike under the fluff. For this 
is the nature of carnival, the order turned upside down."

Happy 1999
Mike Hartley

(((bruces remarks:  monkeywrenching roadbeds is an illegal 
direct-action that will likely get you arrested whether 
you're wearing a tutu or not.  It's rather more Viridian 
to destroy and replant roadbeds that no longer see use.  
You won't get many self-appointed saboteurs there, but 
it's nice work for the elderly.)))

From: ljaurbach@erols.com^* (L. J Aurbach): 

Images of the Mexican Fires

1. Mexican coastline like a wing with contrails
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Mexico_Burning/images/h
ighres/6_23_98/sts091-713-023.jpg

2. Smoking Yucatan
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-
bin/texis/fire_atlas/imgview?imgid=35d8792c8

3. Pastel Smoke Tendril Snaking Around Gulf
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Mexico_Burning/images/h
ighres/smallFSMmex128A.jpg

4. Al Gore's Poster
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/PR/GFMMexSM.jpg

and the sameposter life size 
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/PR/GFMMexLG.jpg

5. Mexico on the Ball (Not much smoke, but great curves on 
that one)
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Mexico_Burning/images/h
ighres/980425-224437-sts90-710-087.jpg

6. Mexico with Campfire Plumes
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-
bin/texis/fire_atlas/imgview?imgid=3618ef6b2

7. Mexico Smothered By Blue Fungus
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-
bin/texis/fire_atlas/imgview?imgid=35d8792c68

8. Primed to Blaze Vegetation Map (nice pointillism)
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/MEXICO/mex_vi_may9
798.gif

Movies

9. Mir Movie
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Mexico_Burning/images/m
exfire.mov

10. Lurid Satellite Smoke Movements
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/MEXICO/GOES/mexico
_goes_small_mov.html

Home Pages

11. Astronaut photos of Mexican Fires
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/Mexico_Burning/

12. Goddard's Global Fire Monitoring
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/fires.html

Goddard's Mexican Fire Images 
http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/fire_atlas/MEXICO/mexico.html

I leave it to you to decide which is "most Viridian."

Laurence Aurbach

(((Well, which one *is* most Viridian?  Don't answer that 
unless you can tell us why.)))