Thursday, March 13, 2014
Janet Echelman creates beautiful net sculptures that float overhead
io9.com: This is the 1.26 Sculpture Project, that was installed in Sydney, Australia in 2011. It's just one of the many beautiful net sculptures created by Janet Echelman. Her next project will be twice the size of her previous largest, suspended 745 feet between a 24-story skyscraper and the Vancouver Convention Center. The goal is for it to be erected in conjunction with TED's 30th anniversary later this month.
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At first I was like, "She just puts nets in the sky?" but then I saw some of the pictures of her stuff and I was like, "Whoa! That's actually really neat!" I would love to see how she does it. Does she just make a simple frame, like the two circles and then wraps a net around them or does she plan out where each strand is going to go and custom make the netting she uses. My guess is that it is a little of both. The designs seem so simple but yet so complex! And apparently it goes up pretty fast; it only took them a day to get it up there. I also wonder if there are light shows that happen on the netting. That'd be an interesting collaboration if she hasn't already done it. This just goes to show that pretty much anything can be made into art.
Lovely, ephemeral, aerial jellyfish… raised by cranes! I was not expecting a comparison to the Aspern crane video, but there you have it. While I could do without the music in this video (unlike the Aspern time lapse), these types of cranes seem to have a bit more personality. Despite their massive size and structure, their ‘mouths’ ever so gently assemble the netting. (Okay, guys in cherry pickers. But from a distance, this is a crane ballet.) From the About section of Janet Echelman’s website: “She sees public art as a team sport and collaborates with a range of professionals including aeronautical and mechanical engineers, architects, lighting designers, landscape architects, and fabricators.” Yes please! Her Vancouver project, in collaboration with Aaron Koblin, sounds even more impressive as “visitors will be able to choreograph the [night] lighting in real time via their mobile devices: http://www.echelman.com/project/skies-painted-with-unnumbered-sparks/
The part that's so interesting to me is the incredibly complex shapes that she is able to get out of simple netting, without any of it seeming to bunch or be un-aestetic in any way. It's really cool how she is collaborating with lighting designers to light her sculptures at night, especially with the crowd-sourced design approach. It seems like many artists would not want other people affecting the interpretation of their work, but she seems to embrace it.
After looking through the pictures of Echelman's work, I'm astonished by the magnitude at which Echelman can produce such graceful art. I'm curious as to how Echelman creates these nets and if they're all hand tied by knots, or if there is a trick. I cannot imagine having to tie a 200 foot stretch of string in a knot 100 times. Having to pull all the line through would be unbearable.
These sculptures are awesome. I like the free floating nature of them and also the colors that she uses. It looks like she uses a combination of colored string and led lights to achieve different looks during the day and night. Like the other people in this thread I really do wonder how she makes these nets because if she does them by hand they seem a little too perfect. It also looks like the park was built at the same time as the sculpture which I find a little strange.
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