Boris
08-10-2004, 06:14 PM
This would would be an awesome place to spend your honeymoon.
lightning zone (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64495,00.html)
In the remote high desert of western New Mexico, a mile-long grid of 400 polished stainless steel poles draws intrepid visitors who come to contemplate the interplay of land and lightning.
Created as a permanent land-art installation by sculptor Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field uses 38,000 pounds of steel to lure lightning strikes.
"No one's been killed out there yet," said Bill Hansen, the cowboy driver who dropped us off at the site in late July. "Don't mess that up," he said.
It was a friendly warning. But the poles held a particular fascination for the engineers in our group, who lingered in the field long after lightning appeared on the horizon.
Installed in a rectangular grid array measuring 1 mile by 0.62 miles (1 kilometer), the poles are 2 inches in diameter and average 20 feet, 7.5 inches in height. The poles are spaced 220 feet apart, with solid pointed tips that together define a horizontal plane.
Hansen said one notorious guest wrapped himself in tinfoil and ventured out into the field to meet the storm. The creators of the site threatened to shoot the man to save him the trouble.
The Lightning Field was principally constructed by Robert Fosdick and Helen Winkler and is maintained by the Dia Art Foundation. The work is intended to be viewed alone or in the company of a very small number of people over at least a 24-hour period. Guests stay in a six-person wooden cabin on the site.
The site, 7,200 feet above sea level and 25 miles from the tiny town of Quemado (which means "burnt" in Spanish), was selected for its isolation, flatness and high degree of lightning activity.
Walk toward the poles and you get a 360-degree view of nothing but scrub, distant mountains and the occasional coyote. "Isolation is the essence of land art," wrote the artists in a booklet found inside the cabin. "The land is not a setting for the work, but part of the work."
To determine the precise positioning of the grid and elevation of the terrain, the creators of The Lightning Field conducted an aerial survey and computer analysis of the site. A land survey determined four elevation points surrounding each pole to ensure the perfect placement and exact height of each piece of steel.
No one has yet observed a lightning strike arc from pole to pole. But on rare occasions, when strong electrical current is present, the tips of the poles glow with a hot ionized gas known as St. Elmo's fire.
The period of primary lightning activity extends from late May though early September, when an average of three storms pass over the sculpture each month. Within an hour of reaching The Lightning Field, we witnessed three simultaneous lightning storms north, south and west of the site.
Strong winds pushed the thunderheads toward us, bringing rain, which turned the field into a sea of mud. The lightning drew close and the desert smelled like sage and ozone. We waited for lightning to find the poles, but the ions merely flirted with the steel and did not make contact.
By evening, the storms retreated back across the range. The wind died, the colors changed, and the desert swarmed with sounds of toads, crickets and brilliant orange hummingbirds.
"The light is as important as the lightning," wrote the artists in their book. "The invisible is real."
lightning zone (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64495,00.html)
In the remote high desert of western New Mexico, a mile-long grid of 400 polished stainless steel poles draws intrepid visitors who come to contemplate the interplay of land and lightning.
Created as a permanent land-art installation by sculptor Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field uses 38,000 pounds of steel to lure lightning strikes.
"No one's been killed out there yet," said Bill Hansen, the cowboy driver who dropped us off at the site in late July. "Don't mess that up," he said.
It was a friendly warning. But the poles held a particular fascination for the engineers in our group, who lingered in the field long after lightning appeared on the horizon.
Installed in a rectangular grid array measuring 1 mile by 0.62 miles (1 kilometer), the poles are 2 inches in diameter and average 20 feet, 7.5 inches in height. The poles are spaced 220 feet apart, with solid pointed tips that together define a horizontal plane.
Hansen said one notorious guest wrapped himself in tinfoil and ventured out into the field to meet the storm. The creators of the site threatened to shoot the man to save him the trouble.
The Lightning Field was principally constructed by Robert Fosdick and Helen Winkler and is maintained by the Dia Art Foundation. The work is intended to be viewed alone or in the company of a very small number of people over at least a 24-hour period. Guests stay in a six-person wooden cabin on the site.
The site, 7,200 feet above sea level and 25 miles from the tiny town of Quemado (which means "burnt" in Spanish), was selected for its isolation, flatness and high degree of lightning activity.
Walk toward the poles and you get a 360-degree view of nothing but scrub, distant mountains and the occasional coyote. "Isolation is the essence of land art," wrote the artists in a booklet found inside the cabin. "The land is not a setting for the work, but part of the work."
To determine the precise positioning of the grid and elevation of the terrain, the creators of The Lightning Field conducted an aerial survey and computer analysis of the site. A land survey determined four elevation points surrounding each pole to ensure the perfect placement and exact height of each piece of steel.
No one has yet observed a lightning strike arc from pole to pole. But on rare occasions, when strong electrical current is present, the tips of the poles glow with a hot ionized gas known as St. Elmo's fire.
The period of primary lightning activity extends from late May though early September, when an average of three storms pass over the sculpture each month. Within an hour of reaching The Lightning Field, we witnessed three simultaneous lightning storms north, south and west of the site.
Strong winds pushed the thunderheads toward us, bringing rain, which turned the field into a sea of mud. The lightning drew close and the desert smelled like sage and ozone. We waited for lightning to find the poles, but the ions merely flirted with the steel and did not make contact.
By evening, the storms retreated back across the range. The wind died, the colors changed, and the desert swarmed with sounds of toads, crickets and brilliant orange hummingbirds.
"The light is as important as the lightning," wrote the artists in their book. "The invisible is real."