The Earth and ArtHaving an objective vision of the world,

& what maps (don’t) tell us; Earthworks: the earth becomes art.

How do we form our opinions of the world around us?

Is the information always neutral?

Da Vinci’s "octant" map, ca. 1514.

Seeing the world from down under (Australia): the Hobo-Dyer world map.

Why is this unusual?How does ‘point of view’ change the way you think

about something?

In 2010, Kai Krause, a computer-graphics guru, caused a stir with a map called "The True Size of Africa", which showed the outlines of other countries crammed into the outline of the African continent. His aim was to make "a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy"— especially the fact that most people don’t realise how much the ubiquitous ‘Mercator projection’ distorts the relative sizes of countries.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography

The world is round, right?

But a sphere cannot be represented on a flat

Plane without distortion, which means all map

Projections distort in one way or another.

Gerardus ‘Mercator Projection’, published in

1569, was useful because it depicts a line of

constant bearing as a straight line, which is

handy (useful) for marine navigation.

The drawback (disadvantage) is that it distorts

the shapes and areas of large land masses, and

the distortion gets progressively worse as you

get closer to the poles.

(Africa looks about the same size as Greenland

under the Mercator Projection, for example,

even though it is in fact 14 times bigger.)

This was not a big problem for 16th-century

sailors, of course, and the Mercator Projection

remains popular even today.

Do you think we should

use the Mercator

Projection, even though

it doesn’t show the

accurate size of

countries?

Why? Why not?

Is it important for art to ‘last’?Why/ Why not?

What kind of mediums won’t last?

Earthworks or Land art

Sonja Hinrichsen, SNOW DRAWINGS AT RABBIT EARS PASS, COLORADO, 2012 http://www.sonja-hinrichsen.com/portfolio-post/snow-drawings-at-rabbit-ears-pass-colorado-2012/#2

In the 1960s and 70s, a number of American artists, including Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson, chose to move away from the traditional gallery and museum spaces to create artworks directly in the landscape. They chose desolate and remote locations - from abandoned industrial sites to uncultivated deserts and mountains. These artists created colossal sculptural interventions in nature, inaugurating the movement of Land art or Earthworks.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty One of the best examples is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake (Utah). With the assistance of a team operating dump trucks, a tractor, and a front loader, Smithson created the sculpture in three weeks in April 1970. Over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth were formed into a spiral coil 1,500 feet long (457m) and 15 feet (4.5m) wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water.The artist chose to create Spiral Jetty in Great Salt Lake due in part to the lake’s unusual physical qualities, including the reddish coloration of the water caused by microbes, as well as how salt deposits crystallized on the black basalt rocks, formed from molten lava of nearby extinct volcanoes, that were scattered along the peninsula. The fractured rocky landscape and fluctuating water levels of Great Salt Lake also appealed to the artist’s long-standing preoccupation with entropy. http://www.diaart.org/sites/page/59/1245

Robert Smithson, SPIRAL JETTY, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970, mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, water coil, 457m long and 4,5m wide, Dia Art Foundation, New Yorkhttp://youtu.be/NUu0_Zn55yM http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/spiral-jetty images

ActivityTake a photo of “The Earth as Art”.

FOLLOW: Instagram accountshttp://instagram.com/nature/

http://instagram.com/ArtHistoryHaggards

WATCH: ‘HOME’ by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

http://www.homethemovie.org/en/informations-about-the-movie/synopsis http://youtu.be/jqxENMKaeCU

Sources: http://eros.usgs.gov/imagegallery/earth-art

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2445615/True-size-Africa-continent-big-China-India-US-Europe-together.html

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/19-maps-that-will-help-you-put-the-united-states-in-perspect#.swVEg61do

http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/

Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/minimalism-earthworks

http://www.artribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Spiral-Jetty-Robert-Smithson.jpg

Excerpts from Robert Smithson’s film http://youtu.be/vCfm95GyZt4

http://www.robertsmithson.com/earthworks/ew.htm

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/20-unforgettable-examples-of-land-art