Taking it slow: Art that’s in for the long haul
"As life seems to get ever faster, several artists are slowing things down to a snail’s pace, producing works that unfold over days, years and even centuries. Jason Farago takes a look at art that’s in for the long haul.
A short drive from Oslo is a massive, beautiful forest: the Nordmarka, a sprawling expanse of spruce and birch. There, in the deep Norwegian wood, the Scottish artist Katie Anderson has planted 100 saplings. Coming to Norway to plant trees might at first sound a bit of a coals-to-Newcastle exercise, but Anderson’s have a destiny: they will grow for 100 years, and then be chopped down, pulped and turned into books. Not just any books, either. These books are to be written over the coming century, one per year, but may not be read until the trees come down and the books are published. Margaret Atwood is contributing the first book for 2015, but you’ll have to live another 99 years if you want to read it.
Anderson’s Future Library is a 100-year artwork: a vision of the future that will only be fully visible long after our deaths. Yet its audience is not merely the readers of the year 2114, by which time, for all we know, the globe may have warmed so catastrophically that Norway will have become a tropical beach destination. Anderson’s slow, deliberate art is also meant for us today – inviting us to contemplate the endurance of culture, the transfer of knowledge and skills across multiple generations, and the prospects for art over time spans far longer than our lives..." from the article: Taking it slow: Art that’s in for the long haul
Video from Solar Sands
"Finally, my name makes sense." from the video introduction
Atlas Obscura’s Guide to the Longest-Running Scientific Experiments
“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When, in 1596, cartographer Abraham Ortelius looked at a map he was working on, he noted something strange: The coasts of the continents looked as if they had once fit together. Ortelius noted in his journal that “The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves.” It would be over 300 years and a dogfight of science before Ortelius was proven right.
Despite the epic changes happening right in front of our eyes—mountains growing, species adapting, the expanding of our universe—these magnificent transformations often remain invisible to us, taking place on a timescale far outside of our ability to perceive them.
As a way of cheating this mortal coil, and peering into deep time, the scientists below have gone about establishing experiments that can outlive them; some are brilliant, some are ridiculous, and a few are just plain unethical. Here are fourteen science experiments that just won’t stop..." from the article: Atlas Obscura’s Guide to the Longest-Running Scientific Experiments
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