Art and the” Man Made Continent of Trash”, a Photographer’s Fantastic Story.

• Art and the” Man Made Continent of Trash”, a Photographer’s Fantastic Story.

I was in Seattle visiting my son and his girl friend and while waiting to go out and take in the sites of Seattle while they ran errands I read about Photographer Chris Jordan’s Photographic series “Running the Numbers One” in the Seattle Sunday Magazine. Jordan uses images to create matrix designs based on the numbers of things. An image of two large breasts popped off the page in juxtaposition to a detailed image of Barbie Dolls arranged in patterns that make up the larger view of the breasts. Jordan used 32000 Barbie Dolls to depict the number of breast augmentations preformed each month in the United States. When I got back to Montana I looked up Jordan’s website and found another one of his Fantastic Number Stories,

• “Gyre” 2009 by Chris Jordan, an image of a Great Wave made out of 2.4 million pieces of plastic that represents the amount of plastic that enters the world’s oceans every hour.

The image, made from plastic debris collected from the Floating Continent of Trash in the Pacific Gyre, is part of, Running the Numbers II, Portraits of Global Mass Culture another photographic series by Chris Jordan.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

• The Pacific Ocean Gyre contains a floating continent of Plastic debris estimated to be twice the size of the Texas.

I first read about the Gyre in a story about Captain Charles Moore who was on his way home from a sailing trip, from Hawaii to Los Angeles when he decided to cut across the area, little traveled by seaman on his way back to California.  Moore explains the Gyre as a Spiral that moves in a clockwise rotation created by ocean currents. The natural spiraling current traps debris and holds them in place. Moore estimates that plastic started showing up in the 1950s and has grown to an alarming size, thousands of miles across. The plastic floats submerged just below the surface of the water, undetectable from satellite images because of the reflection caused by the water.

• Garbage had historically broken down in the oceans until plastic came along.

Every year this new man made material increases its presence in the ocean and the Trash Continent in the Pacific Gyre grows. When I read the story, images of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty flashed in my mind about how the twisting currents of the Gyre worked on this manmade continent of trash. As I read more about the Pacific Gyre the more captivating, its relationship to the idea of entropy and natural systems is to me. This continent of trash is an unforeseen result of human behavior at work in the natural system. Un-natural materials discarded in a thoughtless manner now have grown to unimaginable levels that are affecting the eco system and sea life.

This Man Made Structure, this Continent of Trash is not only an extension of Smithson’s ideas about entropy it is at the center of the Chris Jordan’s idea of Global Mass Culture. Jordan helps us put into perspective the volume Global Mass Production through his imagery.

• As an artist I am struggling with the concept of such a large structure whose mass rotates in a natural form, the spiral.
  

But by reflecting on whirlpools and eddy’s in the river where I live I can envision such a fantastic structure created by the forces of nature. The image of such things takes me back to the late 1970’s Robert Morris installations where he used cotton fibers to create seas of cotton waste from the textile industry with mirrors calculated to continuously, reflect the surface into an infinite image of volume and mass. Morris was part of a group of process artists. (Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences, improvisation, and the liberating qualities of non-traditional materials such as wax, felt, and latex. Using these materials, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.) These ideas seemed radical in art, difficult to adjust our thinking too back in 1970s and 1980s. It clear now that the minimal and conceptual ideas of artists like Morris and Smithson is a reflection of the natural systems at work in our earth environment. Unintended or manufactured the only differences are intent; the results are mirror reflections of the outcomes, like Morris’s fiber and mirror installations and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Chris Jordan helps us to understand the Numbers by bringing perspective and Volume to the size of Global consumption.

• Out there off the coast of the Untied States in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is the result of a random occurrence of the accumulation of man made materials creating a New Continent of Floating Trash; a Floating, spiraling continent of Our Own Making; which will exist for an immeasurable measure of time.

Jordan’s Photographic images illustrate the fact that this new continent is sure to grow in mass and volume daily. It will grow unlike the Hawaiian Islands that Captain Charles Moore sailed home from, created by volcanic activity. Our New Continent will grow because of Human activity directly related to Global Mass Consumption without thoughtful contemplation of unintended results and because of our inability to understand the abstract ideas of volume and mass, our lack of understanding the numbers.

Links About:  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

Capt. Charles Moore Ted TV

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html

Chris Jordan on his Photography Ted TV

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html

Chris Jordan Website

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Man Made Continent of Trash a Fantastic Story by David Eubank February 2008

http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story/

Want to have some fun use Google Earth

http://earth.google.com/

Just type in “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and see the size of our new continent and where it is located.

Filed under: Art, Art News, Earth Sculpture, Environment, Journalism, On Art, Politics, Trash , Charles Moore, Chris Jordan, Continent of Plastic, Enviro, Great Pacfic Garbage Patch, Pacific Ocean, Plastic in the Ocean

Re-Thinking Smithson’s Spiral Jetty

 

Last month I wrote about Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty threatened by an oil development proposal. Smithson’s Jetty is located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The proposal if allowed would permit an oil company to drill test holes near the Jetty site. I have followed the blog’s and news stories and have read about Smithson’s ideas about entropy, the natural system of decay, of systems running down. And I am not the only one who is now asking the question, is saving the Spiral Jetty what Smithson would have wanted? His ideas evolved around the thesis that all systems eventually run down, they waste more energy that is useful in sustaining them, and they decay. Should we then interrupt this premise to save, preserve or restore the Spiral Jetty for our own interests? If the intention of the work was to decay back into nature, which it is, shouldn’t we just leave it alone? Shouldn’t we let nature take its own course? The area Smithson chose in the first place already had decaying oil rigs from the 1920s, it was one of the reasons he built the Jetty where he did. The presence of the old oil rigs in decay, fit into the idea that Smithson was attempting to emulate in nature. Drilling today or not, really does not detract from his ideas and his intention, it is just another chapter in the eventual change of all things natural and manmade. Is it our own vanity that wants to save the Jetty, never mind what Smithson intended in the first place. Today he would have had in all reality the same environmental reaction to his proposal to build the Spiral Jetty as the Oil Companies are experiencing in their attempt to drill for oil. He would have never been able to secure the permits and permissions to build such a project in the Great Salt Lake for any reason, art or not. In fact if you follow the comments on the story across the web many people think the Jetty is just as destructive a presence as the oil rigs. I think, I think that Smithson saw this too when he chose the site to begin with. He knew then that the Jetty would be submerged most of the time when the area drought eased. He planned on the natural colors around the area caused by bacteria and other biological and environmental factors; he liked the pink shade of the water they created. He liked the juxtaposition of the oil rigs that created their own Oil Jetty. Is it our passion for the environment today that suddenly makes us so aware of the destructive nature of post modern and contemporary industrial development? Are we unable to see what the intended purpose of Smithson’s art really was because we filter it through our eyes of today? If our passion takes over, and we can not see what may be far more important we may miss the point. Real progress comes when we challenge ourselves, our beliefs when we ask the real questions and listen to the true answers, even if they are not what we want to hear. That is when we grow as artists and I know when I am growing because everything seems to challenge what I think I think. Those artists who came before us made their contributions to our development, but their ideas were in their time. It is up to us to answer the questions again and again for our time and those who follow us will have to find their own answer to the same questions. But should we not listen to the answers that Smithson gave us through his work and the questions he asked. Should we change the question, the answer to soot our needs our vanity today. Will a generation tomorrow undo what we did or didn’t do? Would you repaint a Van Gogh?

     

More on the Spiral Jetty:

 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n10_v32/ai_16097496

 

http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/01/30/breaking-spiral-jetty-threatened-by-oil-drilling-plans/

 

http://calebwaldorf.net/?q=node/3560

Filed under: Art, Art News, Earth Sculpture, Environment, News, On Art , Art, Earthworks, entropy, Environment, Oil, Robert Smithson, Salt Lake, Sculpture, Spiral Jetty