Creative processes
The Park & Ride scheme is in its early development stage and the challenge for this project is to consider ideas that would be able to be implemented far into the future.
After visiting all of the potential sites with the project team, it seemed appropriate to Michael to develop a conceptual framework that could be applied to each site as it became available. The idea caught the imagination of the project engineer who inputted ideas and potential implementation methodologies. Michael has presented a series of visuals and texts to demonstrate his ideas.
The scale of the project in terms of landmass and timeframe has huge potential for the artist. It originally inspired Michael to conceive of ideas on a scale akin to American land artists of the 1960s and 70s such as Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria. Michael was interested in applying a similar scale and aesthetic to a context that could be seen as having its roots in consumerism.
In the 60s and 70s audiences might have had to hire a plane to see Smithson's Spiral Jetty. Now, with software such as Google Earth, a larger number of present-day spectators can virtually ‘fly’ across the land to view the work. This is now often people's first view of the land. It opens up a new public realm in which artwork that still exists in the environment can only be truly perceived through the mediation of a computer.
Due to a number of changes in the project's direction, Michael has had to reassess his original design goals of using a wide selection of sites and their linkages. He is now beginning to focus on sites specifically. This of course doesn't alter the aims for the Park & Ride scheme but allows the design team to re-focus and develop a new way forward that builds upon structures and strengths that have already been developed.
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