Elementar No.1
Installation for Henry Hudson Memorial Exhibition, PATH TO HENRY HUDSOn, Woodstock, NY, 2009
ELEMENTAR No.1 is a philosophical, experiential outdoor installation, the first of a series that focuses on the planet’s DNA. It invites consideration of one’s life journeys while experiencing the Earth’s ground in darkness or above under the open sky.
The installation is a topographic path. It is defined by two parallel walls that stand up to three feet apart from each other. This freestanding wood hallway expresses a symbolic, sensorial and imaginary route Henry Hudson took into the unknown. It sets up two forms of experience - one on ground and the other above ground. It was presented in Ahoy! Where lies Henry Hudson? (2009), an outdoor exhibition of memorials designed and constructed by regional architects, curated by Linda Weintraub, at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Woodstock, New York.
The ground path between the parallel walls has extremely dim light. While walking inside this dark passage visitors encounter a removed voyage, providing direct contact with the land and ground—a micro-sample of New York's vast upstate natural lands
In a complementary way, there is a second route on the top level: an open, above ground path approximates visitors to treetops and sky, to distant views by day and to reference points like the stars at night.
The installation is a forty-two foot long path composed of two levels, totaling eighty-five feet in length (equal to the size of Hudson's ship, the Half Moon). The basic height measurements for the door and handrail, combined with the landscape's topography, define the height and slope of the piece.
A 60° angle turn divides the hallway in two parts at the twenty-two foot mark, thus avoiding a straightforward view. The structure is made of certified wood. FSC-certified wood ensures that the wood is from a well-managed forest and the company manufacturing the wood practices is an environmentally responsible forestry.
*The installation draws visitors attention to their most tactile extremities by using one's hands and feet to make and ensure safe passage. Juxtaposition of topography and architecture stimulates memory and imagination to adjust to the ground, earth, and land. This trajectory attempts to encourage within the visitor a sense of physical and mental discovery—in opposition to the modern experience of crossing a tunnel or a bridge, where the objective is only to go from one end to the other. Here, a sensorial reading of land mirrors the vicissitudes of life as a journey, not only Henry Hudson's and his crew’s, but also ours.
1-7 © Arthur Nobreimage credits