Wrestle with the earth forever
Botanists, satellites, and politicians
Dig, dry, destroy
The butterfly effect
Uncanny playspace
Turbine testing and wind on demand
Fluid dynamic domestication
So, is it beautiful?
Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring...
Moving the [atmospheric] river
Exhibition
Curatorial Conversation
Gallery
About
At Owens Lake, anything measured or counted on the ground must be verified and approved by satellites and stakeholders far away – and anything seen or prescribed by satellites and stakeholders far away must be implemented or confirmed on the ground. Progress here is something between a feedback loop and a mobius strip.
LADWP’s dust mitigation project is a cycle of tracking and measuring and counting, adjusting, and then tracking and measuring and counting again. From the scale of the 1 meter point frame used in field work, the 30 meter pixel of the reflective infrared sensors on imaging satellites, the 32,000 mile long plumbing network feeding the managed vegetation, to more ephemeral distances like the range of a butterfly or bird, or the distance documents travel between stakeholders across the state, country, and world.
As veteran DWP botanist Dr. Mary Werner explains, “What has kept me here is the endless struggle to track what nature is doing so that we may attempt to improve our partnership with it. To me, that starts on the ground in the sand, but to some that starts at a desk or in the sky. Not only do we have to understand what is happening from one perspective, we then have to reconcile with many stakeholders who may have different perspectives or be looking from a completely different vantage point.”
This selection of stories probes the interdependencies and scalar relationships throughout the purview of Dr. Werner, whose daily work ranges from “ground truthing” satellite observations, to adjusting watering temperatures and mixtures, to recording and observing data on some of Owens Lake’s most elusive inhabitants. As her recordings or inputs are noted, encoded, and sent up the chain of command, it becomes difficult to track the transition from human to automatic evaluation, and after a while, who or what is the instigating force.
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