The World Vane was created as a result of a graduate thesis for my MFA from San Francisco State University in 1991. I had a World Vane site back then and it had a bunch of graphics about what it was and how the idea was supposed to work. I shut down the sight a few years later but kept the domain name. I'm trying to get back on the net and the World Vane and some of my other ideas might be fun to share. Maybe you will all make me rich and famous. Maybe I will make all you rich and famous. Nothing happens with out a "link" to the "net". Besides, "World Vane" sounds so global. You know, like we are all one family. Back in the day, we had this thing called "Spaceship Earth". In my mind I interpreted that to mean: All crammed into the same can - breathing the same air - in it "together". Today we believe we can kill each other until we run out of air, food and water. I'm not pessimistic, look out your window.
What I'm saying, is that the World Vane was this "wild" attempt to get human consciousness onto a single wavelength. Wavelength being the thought: we are one planet headed into the future together. The World Vane is a monument to that idea. A place you can take a hike to and relax, and reflect about: "Oh yeah, that's right, we ARE in this together; with all our different tongues; all our different skins; all our different ideas.
The World Vane was intended to reach out and into the local and global conciousness - a static/passive/unobtrusive/silent/durable/aesthetic/locally grown/macro and micro reminder that: "we are one planet, all together, racing like blind maniacs into a future, we can never know, until we get there. Which raises the question: "Where is there?"
There is no "there". An arrow doesn't hit a bulls-eye until it gets there. Where this big "arrow" looking thing that the World Vane resembles points, is meaningless. Initially I reasoned out we could collectively "point" the vanes into a direction that was derived from the sampled wind directions from various participating key areas around the planet (where these truly monumental versions would great ships at sea out on a coastline somewhere. And just like a light house keeper, there is a custodian, that actually "lives"inside the Tower part of the World Vane. Imagine a light house on a coast with a huge arrow on top of it.
Maybe you're getting the idea, maybe you're not. Each area where one is built, they build it out of the neighboring environment or economies. The REALLY large ones are way out in the boonies, like the leading and trailing coastlines of the seven continents. Really big, durable. These big ones I call "Continentals". They had to be durable and withstand any weather (this is all assuming that there is a multi-billionaire that has to impress his friends about how he managed to build his own monumental World Vane. Therein lies the problem with the concept. 1) It is hard to communicate that it is simple. 2) It can be interpreted as the West intruding and throwing its economic (that's a laugh) weight around with their intrusive myths. The problem with this idea is that there are "prerequisites": You would have to assume that all the nations of the Earth agree that we can all get along as friendly neighbors and make no more war - why would you kill yourself if you were truly one with everyone else? Global Peace is the first hurdle. To realistically suspect that the world is going to embrace this idea, is nuts.
But the World Vane is extremely lateral. It goes the other ways. Local communities putting on bake sales, or fund raisers to get the money together to build their own. The "local" side mirrors the "global" side. For the idea to be durable, also means it had to be really simple. The whole thing breaks down into five basic elements: Torch, Globe, Spine, Tail, and Tower. Images will be posted soon I hope.
The reason I can't give you a damn picture is because I have troublesome hard drives and obsolete computers. What good are hard drives for backup when the hard drive crashes and you can't get to your stuff? Thank you, Western Digital, hell of a product!
Which brings up a point. The whole monumental, inter-continental network would work with nothing more advanced than a telephone.
The actual "update" would go something like this: Go outside and write down the number (000-360) where the local wind is coming from. You go inside call the 800 number to The World Vane central receptionist. The can call in this direction daily, weekly, or monthly, or not at all for that matter. That number is added to the other numbers participating. That toal number is divided by the number of participants. That resulting number is where we ALL "point" our individual World Vanes.
Being that this memory usage amounts to only three little numbers, those numbers can go anywhere. When you "update" you're local World Vane, you'll know that the others who are participating are also pointing theirs into that same number. A point to aim at which is a "product" of all the participants. Its a little bit too humanistic. Sometimes it even creeps me out. But I think its an interesting thought experiment if nothing else.
If you've made it this far with me, I agree, there's too damn much explaining going on. No one will sit through a thorough layout of the grand idea to get it-that its ridiculously simple. It fails in its ability to get a simple idea across simply. It does work as a CONCEPT however, and that was really the core of its intention. What if, we could think about projects beyond reality, with no limitations? No worry about how, or how much it would cost? In architecture they call this genre "Folly". Fancy, outlandish, flights of urban imagination. Ever hear of Gustav Eiffle? As soon as the cost or the politics sink the whole thing, it can be buried, and lost forever. In the mind however, they can all kiss your -ss. I'll get into drawing later (someone remind me). If nothing else happens it CAN exist for us in our minds. Its in our minds where all the heavy lifting takes place.
The "thesis" of all this, which the World Vane is one among others, the whole idea is essentially this: The experience of art does not take place at the art. .
I know that comes off as flip, but I think that's what's going on. You don't take the Mona Lisa home with you. You take the "memory" or "mental image" of whatever it meant to you, home with you. Not the artwork itself. You turn off the lights in an art gallery and what do you have? A dark room. What lives is what is going on in your head about it, if anything. I'm an armchair physicist/philosopher, but all this stuff I'm talking about is conceptual design. At least that's what my major was all about: non-traditional art-making: video, sound, performance, computers, ocean currents, whatever, to convey an "idea". The "idea" is the mission. I kind of latched onto that in my thesis and wanted to use that mechanism (plant physical ideas into a container with no boundaries), the mind, to experience whatever it is, which is all any of us can really do with what it is that art does to us.
There will be more to come about all this, in one form or another so check back in.
I first wrote on this over a year or more ago. Today is 6-28-12. The mention about drawing above? - I read a comic book: Spiderman vs. Wolverine. I don't know what year it was but it had to be in graduate school, around '89. Somehow Spiderman killed Wolverine's sister! (I think it was). They get into a fight in a graveyard in Germany. Wolverine is pounding the sh-t out of Spiderman, smashing the tomb stone behind him he's hitting him so hard. All day long I can't get the image out of my mind how pissed off they were with each other. When I got back home to check what it was that bugged me all day, I look at the panel in the comic book and it wasnothing.A couple lines, three or four colors. Somewhere in there I made the connection thateverythingbegins with a line, and where it can go in our minds may be limitless. The guy that dreampt up the Space Shuttle probably drew a line on a piece of paper first, or better yet on a napkin.The point I'm making is that almost everything evolves from a
drawing.Especially if it never existed before. Humble beginnings. That first step. And then somewhere in there I made the connection that thelinewould never exist is if wasn't for amindto create it. And as stupid as that sounds, I concluded the mind was a blank slate without any boundaries. You could put anything in there. It didn't matter how much something costs in there. Thoughts don't cost. So I tried to dream up a couple things that would frustrate any ego and bankroll, that no one could afford, and or it would be impossible to build. Where it can exists with no problem, is in the head. In there it can be anything we want. Like athoughtexperiment. All this was before CGI. Today all this could be built, if only digitally. Anyway, The line, a drawing, is something like primal. Just ask any cave painting. I bet you thought I was going to teach you how to draw. You're probably not even here reading this.