"Moisture" at Desert Research Station Research Project Explores Water Collection
and Use
The integrated projects of Deena Capparelli,
Claude Willey and Kahty Chenoweth under construction at the “Moisture”
event at the DRS. CLUI photo
In October, 2002, the Center’s Desert Research
Station, near Hinkley, California, hosted a month-long research
project involving the work of several artists and researchers
exploring issues of water collection, retention, and consumption
in arid environments. The project coordinator, Claude Willey,
of California State University, invited six researchers to create
site and theme-specific landscape projects at the DRS. Though
the projects are conceptual in nature, they are, in theory, practical,
and represent an application of the tools of the arts to "real
world" issues. Some of these projects will stay in place
for the foreseeable future, and are available for viewing by the
public.
The Moisture project is evolving into a continuous
research program at the DRS and the surrounding region, which
is dominated by Harper Dry Lake, a six-mile long lakebed that
emptied into the Mojave River almost 15,000 years ago, but is
now an isolated basin. The basin has an enriched context that
makes for an appropriate setting for CLUI programming: the dry
lakebed has been used for aerospace projects, including a doomed
Howard Hughes aircraft; it contains the largest (in output) solar
power plant in the world; has a history of groundwater depletion
due to agricultural overdraft; has an emerging natural area with
an “area of critical environmental concern” and associated
interpretive structures; and has a number of other intriguing
architectural and industrial sites, ringing the lake.
New interpretive walkways installed at the edge
of Harper Dry Lake, help people see the "Area of Critical Environmental
Concern.", CLUI photo
This initial version of the Moisture
project consisted of installations by Deena Capparelli, Bernard
Perroud, Susan SeBarnet, Adam Belt, Kahty Chenoweth, and Claude
Willey, with help from over 30 students from Pasadena City College.
Based out of the Desert Research Station, Peter Fend of Ocean
Earth Development Corporation spent several days conducting field
research in the Harper Basin, in preparation for the execution
of a potential future “Moisture” project.
“This, and future versions of Moisture, could
be considered less as an assortment of individual works, but more
as components of a larger work: the ongoing event itself,”
said project coordinator Claude Willey, who is looking forward
to getting his “feet wet” in the next round of Moisture.
Foreign Dirt Arrives in
Boron Possible Soil Exchange Program
Initiated
A crate one meter square, containing dirt from
Transylvania, has joined the other large boxy objects at the CLUI
High Desert Storage and Logistics site near Boron, California.
The owners of the dirt, the Earth Consignment group, of London,
England has contracted the Center to keep the crate on site indefinitely,
noting that the region is favored for outdoor storage of large
objects, as indicated by the internationally known aircraft storage
site in the nearby town of Mojave (whose collection of commercial
airliners has swelled dramatically in the last year, as airlines
reduce the size of their fleets).
The CLUI storage site is located adjacent to the largest open
pit mine in California, the US Borax Company’s borate mine,
which is now two miles wide. This mine supplies half the world’s
borates, compounds that are used in innumerable products and industries,
from nuclear reactors to hand soap. The material is distributed
through an elaborate international shipping network managed by
the company, using a dedicated terminal in Los Angeles Harbor
which ships borates around the globe, including to another company
terminal in Rotterdam, Netherlands, from which the bulk material
is moved throughout Europe via barge, rail, and truck.
The fact that so much boron is shipped all over the world from
this single mine has led the CLUI to consider the notion of using
its storage site in Boron to correct this imbalance, by providing
space for foreign dirt, starting, perhaps, with this shipment
from Transylvania.
