h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

12:01 1/1/2000 - The Wind Wand is lit!

Almost 3000 people gathered along the New Plymouth foreshore to witness the mayor flick the switch and light the bulb on top, that should (when the wind picks up) wave back and forth nightly.

It was cold, dark and wet, but being among the first in the year 2000 to see 45 metre high red light bulb just about makes up for it!

Well, that and having fireworks going off about a hundred feet away from you...

12:01 03/01/2000 The Wind Wand's down!

After only 2 days of "operation", the Wind Wand is being taken down to see why it has failed to light up automatically at sunset.

This bodes well for the new millennium...

How many city council engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

Four!

The Wind Wand sounds a little like Wichita's Tripodal. Lots of people wanted it, so the city bought it. Now that it's rusting and falling apart, no one wants to deal with it. Of course, it's a bit older than the Wind Wand (1975+-) and survived twenty five years of Kansas weather.

And the answer to the question "how many Wichita council engineers does it take to change a light bulb?" is...

Whoa, wait a minute. Did you say change?

Unfortunately it seems few people wanted the Wind Wand, mainly because a sizeable portion (about a third) of the cost came from "ratepayers money". The odd thing is, even though people are decrying it, debating its artistic merits (usually in the "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" vein), imitation wands are springing up all over the place. On top of bars, in backyards, in neighbouring towns... Len Lye would've been very amused.

Paradoxical. To complain about and then to immitate or parody. Tax payers uaually pay some portion for civic artworks. Do you have typhoons there? Seems strong winds would keep the thing from working all that well. How do they get the power to the red light on top? What kind of timer or sensor to they use to light it at dusk? The more those things get banged around, the more they malfunction.

Well, it is the windy season at the moment, as we draw towards the end of Summer, but the kind of wind events you're referring to are extremely rare, the last such incident being Cyclone Bola in the mid-80s. New Plymouth is more of a rain city.

The original 25 metre Wind Wand was made of fibreglass, a plastic sphere and of course a lightbulb or lamp. It's big brother is probably built on similar lines. It's obviously hollow in the centre to allow the wires up through it, and it is supposed to operate on a timer. And you're right, since the thing is one big moving part, it's bound to have problems. Moreso than Len Lye's other works which are generally made of steel (which would have its own problems on a foreshore).

Check this link to the local gallery to see some really tiddly pictures of his other works:

http://www.govettb.org.nz/LenLye/SCULP/

I lived in Taiwan for three years and we had taiphoons on a regular basis. Different hemisphere I guess.
On a university campus here we have a sculpture that is sort of like the wind wand. It's made of steel shaped like a Y with a pointer attached to the tip of each arm. They were supposed to be balanced so that they would indicate the direction of the wind, but I think they get stuck sometimes. I don't remember who the sculptor was, but could have been Len Lye. We have a lot of others by relatively famous artists. When they become weathered or vandalized it's a chore to repair them, but they look nice most of the time. The horse made of crome car bumpers looks a little like a walking junk yard, but that's probably where it came from. Recycled art.

There's a guy in the province that does stuff like that with corrugated iron but he usually makes cows. The plebs seem to like it cos' it looks like what it's supposed to look like, and they can say "Ooh, isn't that clever?"

On a highway going east of Wichita there's a farm with iron sculptures of a grasshopper, preying mantis, deer jumping the fence, buffalo, an Indian shooting an arrow, and several other things. Not quite what anyone expects to see by the side of the road in a field. I think they're made of machine parts. Most of the roadside art in Kansas is intended to be humorous though. A big round hay bale with 8 legs and eyes like a spider with legs sticking out of it's mouth shows up around Halloween every year. Not exactly high art, but suggesting someone was high when making it.
Personally I like the works of M.C. Escher. They don't look like anything I've ever seen before. His engravings don't translate to sculpture well, I wouldn't think, but in two dimentions they're a lot more interesting than cows and horses made of scrap. The detail in his work is fascinating.

The work of NZ artist Neil Dawson might interest you, and curiously, is the subject of a Wind Wand style debate in the NZ city of Christchurch.

Try this link http://www.tp2000.org.nz/ to check out a picture of the scale model for "Chalice" proposed for the city square. Neil is a sculptor by definition, but really he's a painter or a calligrapher, the sky is his canvas, his work a giant drawing suspended in mid-air.

Mr. Dawson sounds like a sky-writer. Is he? We don't see them much any more but when I was a kid they used to fly over the city once in a while.
Personally I would prefer something like The Chalice over a Wind Wand. Someone decided to build two bridges down town with lamp posts that look like heads of wheat. The things are about 10 meters high. I don't remember who decided or when, since I was probably more interested in finding employment at the time, but they were finished last year in time for the River Festival, a yearly event in Wichita. I don't think anyone ooohed or aaahed over them, but they beat what was there before.

Sky writers, eh? It would make an interesting change if the helicopters and light aircraft left something more impressive than an airsplitting racket as they fly over my place (for some unknown reason, we are are on a flight path).

One of my favourite Dawson pieces is of a 2D outline image of a floating boulder that's being held down by a 2D rope.
__
/@/
Kind of like that, and looks great set against blue sky or surrounding flora.

Floating boulder. Hmmm. Mr. Dawson is clearly not a sky writer. I know what you mean about airplane noise. Used to live within five miles of an airbase. It was fun to watch the thunderbirds fly overhead, but at 6 AM, not fun to wake up to the roar of their on duty counterparts. Most of the sky writers only drew things like hearts, or messages they were paid to write.
But then, a skywriter who lands his crop-duster plane in the field next to grandpa and grandma's farm leaves a permanent impression on a five year old's mind.
Art in Wichita tends toward more concrete images. Probably the most famous is the Keeper of the Plains by Black Bear Bosen that stands at the place where two rivers meet.

This Black Bear chappie woudn't be of indigenous extraction, would he? T'would be interesting if he (or she) was, for there are a number of Maori (indigenous NZers) artists who are sculptors, in fact I studied art alongside a few of them.

Current story in the local paper is about a local Maori sculptor, Reece Rongonui, whose is trying to find bidders for his latest creation, a yacht carved out of a massive boulder, in honour of the recent America's Cup regatta, held recently in Auckland (which we won, yayy!!!).

Mr Bosin would indeed be of indigenous extraction. If you want to see the Keeper of the Plains, check out www.theindiancenter.com Lots of people in Wichita are kinda proud of the old guy. Bosin was more of a painter than sculpter though. I have a print of one of his paintings on the wall in my classroom. "The Feather Dancer" It's one he gave to groups of little girlscouts who visited his gallery, which is how I came by it. Closest I've ever been to a famous artist was seeing him at his drawing table when I was 10 but too shy to say anything to him.

Congratulations on winning the America's Cup.

Yeah, the plebs seemed to enjoy, it was just a pity the competition wasn't a bit closer. A case of slaughter in the water.

Liked the Keeper of the Plains. Is there more than one Keeper, cos I had a look for some his work and found a similar looking sculpture, but without the feathers and tassels of the one at the Indian Center site.

I like the way he covers a number of styles, someone who hates complacency.

On a slightly different stylistic front, but still with indigenous artists at the core, one of my fave Maori artists is Ralph Hotere. He does a lot of deep, dark emotional work. Black features quite heavily, but it's a supportive black, accentuating all other colours.

http://www.mcdougall.org.nz/Archive/hotere.html

Could be that Bosin did a smaller model of the Keeper before starting on the big one.
Hotere does deep dark emotional work indeed. I think it's a little beyond me. Maybe I'd better read the poems that inspired them.

That site might prove relevant to the thread.