This is a project that was scheduled for public viewing for one day only on May 19th, 2007 in Joshua Tree, CA U.S.A.

- Vision Request - is the official central webpage. Over a dozen artists participated and the event was a great success.

This page documents my own project.

This sculpture is the first of a new series of abstract work I have been developing. It is inspired by Alva Noë's theory of "Action in Perception". A discussion of my interpretation of the book "Action in Perception" will be forthcoming on a separate essay page. Here I will only say that this sculpture comes alive only when the viewer moves around it and this skilled viewer in motion is the object of study.

The sculpture is designed to disassemble and fit inside a United State Postal Service Flat Rate box. The U.S.P.S. provides this packaging free of charge for domestic shipments. I chose the Post Office because it is the Federal government and hence has no need for or benefit from so-called "product placement". Product placement is an advertising term for the visible inclusion of name brand consumer products in artwork, such as props on a movie or television program. Advertisers consider product placement to be desirable. It is so ubiquitous that it often goes unnoticed. I know someone who has a job counting instances of product placement on television shows.

The Flat Rate box is a size chosen by the Post Office. The published interior dimensions are 11.875" x 3.375" x 13.625". These dimensions may have been chosen for the convenience of the Post Office, or maybe for the shipper, but in any case for a work of art they are arbitrary. The challenge is to work with these arbitrary restrictions to create a work of art that transcends them, or to put it another way, to create a work of art that will bloom in the desert.

The advantage of the compact shipping container is easy portability. The freedom to move the sculpture from place to place reduces dependence on heavy infrastructure both for producing it and showing it, at least for the artist. It still needs the infrastructure of the Post Office. Sculpture is notorious for heavy weight, large scale, and difficult logistical challenges.

I have never visited Joshua Tree and only once briefly in the southeastern United States. I will reflect on the impression the environment makes on me in the next post.