OpenEnded Group's reconstruction of Bombay Beach, Salton Sea, CA

I have been a fan of OpenEnded Group since I first heard about their work through EMPAC during my residency there in 2009.  I’ve never been able to get to Troy to see their work installed as it should be seen, unfortunately (I was sad to miss out on this event) but I recommend reading their recently released NEH-sponsored White Paper when you have some time.

They write: “If we can imagine creating Bombay Beach as a human-size immersive 3d installation, it will have something in common with Smithson in its sense of scale, of entropy, and of inexorable natural forces. However, it would be peopled not only by the artist or artists who created it, but also by many others who have used the same canvas of Bombay Beach as their means of expression — from the graffiti tags with which they imprint the place, to the found art arrangements they leave behind, to the photographs they post online. And many of the stories told there would be by those whose memories situate themselves within a vanished space whose vestiges have been reconstructed in this simulacrum. Such a virtual installation, we believe, would be intrinsically hybrid — an artwork that enfolds many art expressions; a history that intertwines personal, cultural, historical, and ecological strands.”

Although my current work is not interactive, the above is exactly why I was drawn to 3d imaging in the first place: because of the possibility that it might be a richer way to represent not just space but spatiality, i.e. the multilayered histories, stories, events, memories and dreams that existed or exist on the same piece of earth.