Art and Nature and Technology What is Nature? What is natural?

Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, 1963

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970

Fort Ancient Culture (. ), Great Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio, c

Creating Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970. Excerpts from Smithson’s Spiral Jetty video (warning if you have vertigo!) Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970.

Smithson walking on Spiral Jetty

View of Spiral Jetty from the shore

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1980

12 feet high x 130 feet long (43 yards) x 3 inches deep

The Trial of Tilted Arc, 1985 Speaker after speaker who wanted the sculpture removed identified it with graffiti, lawlessness and even terrorism. The work was painted with epithets like ''nonsense,'' ''garbage,'' ''hideous,'' a ''calculated offense,'' the ''barrier that passes as art'' and the ''Berlin Wall of Foley Square.'' One person who works in the neighborhood asserted that the work was ''negative and useless. There is no idea, no humor, no education value, no nothing. It looks barren, it is barren.'' Another speaker said that ''there is nothing, nothing to justify the title of work of art in this piece of scrap iron, and that is all there is to it.''

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969-70, Overton, NV

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969-70, Overton, NV

Walter De Maria, Lightning Field, 1977

400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles—two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7½ inches in height—are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time

Walter De Maria, New York Earth Room, 1977

De Maria, Broken Kilometer, 1979

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1975

Andy Goldsworthy, Hole in leaves sinking, held underneath to a woven briar ring keeping it afloat, 1987 More Goldsworthy

Gordon Matta Clark, Splitting, 1974

Gordon Matta Clark, Splitting video documentation (bootleg video from museum, no sound, 7 minutes

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, 1972-76

Running Fence, 5.5 meters (eighteen feet) high, 40 kilometers (twenty-four and half miles) long, extending East-West near Freeway 101, north of San Francisco, on the private properties of fifty-nine ranchers, following rolling hills and dropping down to the Pacific Ocean at Bodega Bay, was completed on September 10, 1976. The art project consisted of: forty-two months of collaborative efforts, the ranchers' participation, eighteen public hearings, three sessions at the Superior Courts of California, the drafting of a four-hundred and fifty page Environmental Impact Report and the temporary use of hills, the sky and the Ocean. All expenses for the temporary work of art were paid by Christo and Jeanne-Claude through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs. Running Fence was made of 200,000 square meters (2,222,222 square feet) of heavy woven white nylon fabric, hung from a steel cable strung between 2,050 steel poles (each: 6.4 meters / 21 feet long, 9 centimeters / 3 1/2 inches in diameter) embedded 1 meter (3 feet) into the ground, using no concrete and braced laterally with guy wires (145 kilometers (90 miles) of steel cable) and 14,000 earth anchors. The top and bottom edges of the 2050 fabric panels were secured to the upper and lower cables by 350,000 hooks.

Drawing for Running Fence

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, 1980-83 6.5 million square feet of floating pink fabric encircled eleven islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay, extending the perimeter of each island by 200 feet. Ultimately, the project benefited its surroundings: Christo and Jeanne-Claude's crew removed forty tons of garbage from the uninhabited islands. As the unfurling began on 4 May 1983, the islands themselves seemed to bloom. Remaining on view for two weeks, the work was visible to the public from the causeways, the land, the water, and the air.

Drawing for Wrapped Pont Neuf, 1985

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Reichstag, 1995

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, NYC, 2005

Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape, 1965- present

Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape, 1965- present

Alan Sonfist, Time Landscape, 1965- present

Mark Dion, Museum of Poison (Biocide Hall) 2001

Mark Dion, Museum of Poison (Biocide Hall) 2001

Mark Dion, Museum of Poison (Biocide Hall) 2001

Nam June Paik, TV Garden, 1974

Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, TV Bra for Living Sculpture, 1969

Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, TV Bra for Living Sculpture, 1969

Nauman, Live/Taped Video Corridor, 1970 In the closed-circuit installation «Live/Taped Video Corridor», Nauman set two monitors above one another at the end of a corridor almost ten meters long and only 50 cm wide. The lower monitor features a videotape of the corridor. The uppermost monitor shows a closed-circuit tape recording of a camera at the entrance to the corridor, positioned at a height of about three meters. On entering the corridor and approaching the monitors, you quickly come under the area surveyed by the camera. But the closer you get to the monitor, the further you are from the camera, with the result that your image on the monitor becomes increasingly smaller. Another cause of irritation: you see yourself from behind. A person thus monitored suddenly slips into the role of someone monitoring their own activities. -Dörte Zbikowski

TeamLab, Crystal Universe, 2014 (controlled by smartphone app)

Bill Viola, The Crossing, 1996, video and sound installation, dimensions variable

Eduardo Kac, GFP Bunny, 2000 (Alba)

Orlan, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, 1990 on

Orlan, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, 1990 on

Orlan: Inspiration for Lady Gaga?

Stelarc, Third Hand, 1980-98

Stelarc, Third Hand and Excerpts from Amplified Body performance/video, 1994

Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2003