Blue Sky (Navigation Pod)
A structure built as a homage to the sky,
From Brian Oakes and Lee Pivnik
Wooden structure, Semi-translucent Fabric, Video projection sent into the sky showing footage of starling murmurations and the Feb. 15, 2013 Chelyabinsk Meteor Explosion.
Audio from the video is transcribed below. (A series of poems, facts and observations written by the artists.)
In the year 1054 AD a star erupted and the explosion was visible from Earth.
Chinese astronomical records state that for 23 days the supernova was so bright it could be observed during the daytime. Furthermore, references to the event are made in documents from Japan and the Arab world and possible records exist in Europe and in New Mexico from the Pueblo Indians
This city
Welcome to now
Your temporary
Fluff
As you spin and modulate and caress each other
As if someone stirred you
As if someone took a grinder to your rose
The Sky is an eggshell
Robins Egg Blue
And as we send probes and ships up into it
Our world
And the world up above
Merge into one
11:11 am
Downtown is on fire
We ask for blue skies
A color so pristine it is wholly itself
It is such a nice day
The sky delivers what it wants however
And often we aren’t rewarded with blue
A storm slams down
Massive
Stretching up through the stratosphere
A necessary disaster to compound our attraction to the color blue
When the earth sends things to the sky
When the sky sends things to the earth
We react
In perfect harmony
A blue so bright it’s hard to look at
I shield my eyes behind palm fronds that break the overwhelming expanse above me.
The derived recurrence of grey
The divine recursion of gradients
The constant infinities of what’s two miles up vs the sky in my hand
Today is a good day for a great day
8:21 am
The sky looks as if a large cup of warm cream is being stirred into it
And it hasn’t really mixed yet
8:48am
The sky spat out a thick fog and I can see the outline of the sun without hurting my eyes.
8:59am
The sky is still warm, a lavender grey.
If one was to mate with the sky
The offspring would be the flesh colored clouds one sees on a cool afternoon
As the sun sets over a landscape of lesser beings
People have used the sky to navigate for thousands of years
As have birds
As have bees
As have beetles
The Manx Shearwater, a small seabird
After a brief glance of the sky could fly home (across the Atlantic Ocean)
At full speed, never second guessing itself
As long as the sun or stars were visible during its first observation.
