On Jul 18, 2006, at 7:25 PM, Ryan Griffis wrote:
> Not too mention the actual Disney run "New Urbanist" venture called
> Celebration, also in Florida of course.
Alas, I never made it to Celebration either. A friend and I got lost
looking for it, easy to do in Central Florida. Andrew Ross, head of
American Studies at NYU, spent a year there and wrote a good book about
it. He found it quite agreeable if I remember.
Out of desperation while looking for other work I took a job as a
"landscape engineer" at a large resort in Florida but liked it so much
I stayed on for three years. The resort had certain NU aspects to it
and while I wouldn't want to live or vacation in such a place I enjoyed
working there because it was such a constructed environment and it gave
me an opportunity to think of art environmentally. Not quite Land Art
but not landscaping either. Something in between. I became particularly
interested in irrigation and learned quite a bit about basic
engineering concepts. I also was in charge of the artificial waterway
that wound through the 17 acres and took care of the swans, ducks and
koi.
The resort had lots of conferences of new media companies and the
military where the latest gadgets were demonstrated in the lush
tropical setting because, I suppose, it was so incongruous. The irony
is that there's probably no more high tech place on earth than Disney
World.
So, I tend to agree with the others about permanence but think it may
be useful to think in terms of sustainability when dealing with new
media in public art just as you have to do with gardens and animals.
There's also a Christo inside of me that likes the idea of dealing with
the bureaucracy as part of the work. It beats writing grant
proposals.
Robbin
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