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I'm down flat with a very strong flu, but I do have a couple of current images to offer before I'm really back on my feet. This is the low winter noontime sun pouring through the central portal of James Turrell's Skyspace at the De Young Museum. I need that light to get me up and running. This is a wonderful acoustic space as well, often full of kids and/or musicians.
I just learned of the passing of Michael McGarvey, founder and long time owner of Red's Java House located on the San Francisco waterfront just south of the Bay Bridge. This place has always amazed and delighted me with it's grass roots menu, black and white historical photos, and its spectacular location. The obituary-article on Mr. Mc Garvey in the January 12 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle adds new appreciation to this unique place.
A huge fire in the 1970s destroyed the pier shed of Pier 32 behind Red's, but the McGarvey Brothers place lived on as one of the last outposts of the old waterfront.
1-12 article on Mike McGarvey in the San Francisco Chronicle
Both the history and the immediate presence of Black Point/ Fort Mason have a pull on me. This has always been a strategic location on the Bay. First the Spanish and then the United States military used the bluff to guard the bay against hostile invasion. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Fort Mason's mission shifted from keeping hostile ships out of the bay to projecting U.S. military power throughout the Pacific, starting with the Spanish American War. Tens of thousands of troops and millions of tons of supplies passed through this depot in World War ii. It was the serious business of empire building.
Military operations ceased in the mid 1960s and now Fort Mason is the stage for a glorious collection of cultural institutions including the Magic Theater, an SFMOMA gallery, Greens Restaurant, the Mexican Museum, the outdoor Exploratorium, and the Long Now Museum and Gallery. It's a fascinating transformation when one stops to think about it.
This afternoon it is the Long Now gallery next to the SFMOMA space that pulls me into a reflection on time, the future, and what I would like to contribute to It All. I know about the Long Now talks held at the Cowell Theater here at Fort Mason, but now it is the all- mechanical 10,000 Year Clock that grabs my attention through the window. Are these guys serious?
Power for the Clock comes from the two helical weight drives on either side of the clock. The timing for the Clock is generated both by a torsional pendulum, with a one minute period, and by a Solar Synchronizer that recalibrates the Clock to solar noon on any sunny day.
Indeed, they seem to be serious. When I enter the space in Landmark Building A I am met with a beautiful receptionist named Kat and a glittering array of sophisticated clockworks. There are prototypes for the various apparatuses for powering and periodic callibration of the clock, eventually to be built on a monumental scale and placed inside a remote mountain at a high elevation in eastern Nevada. There are also substantial explanatory materials in the Long Now gallery including audio and video pieces The whole place hums with a confident intelligence- serious and playful at the same time.
This is the first concept proof of a chime generator for the 10,000 Year Clock. A progressive algorithm is generated through a series of phased geneva wheels, which are the large star-shaped plates running down the center of the mechanism. The algorithm produces a different bell ringing order for each day the clock is visited over the next 10,000 years, resulting in over 3.5 million combinations. The algorithm was also used for Brian Eno's January 07003: Bell Studies for The Clock of the Long Now. The prototype is made of aluminum, steel, and brass; the final, much larger mechanism will be made of monel with cast bronze bells.
The concept behind Long Now is driven by the desire to transmit what is best in our global humanity to future generations, and to consciously and explicitly link our lives to theirs - a noble, heartfelt impulse. There is an effort to give the clock such an iconic presence that it will become an attractor and integrator for our ongoing, collective storytelling and myth making. I'm touched that these engineering types would collaborate on such a poetic project. I also wonder- can a mechanical device really perform this task? It's an interesting question.
This prototype of a Solar Synchronizer for the 10,000 Year Clock will help the Clock keep accurate time over millennia. Due to frictiion and changes in temperature, error will inevitably build up in the pendulum's timekeepiing. A mechanism like this one is needed to check the clock's daily pendulum-based timekeeping (for absolute time) against local solar time (the observable movement of the Sun).
The wondrous cave paintings of southern France and Spain have shown that cultural artifacts can indeed inspire for 10,000 year plus. They have an elemental power and beauty that begins with the ancient rock and moves through plant and mineral pigments into gracious animal forms. Human beings worked these paintings and I feel deeply connected to them. Will the mechanical-conceptual beauty of the Long Now clock and library have a similar or greater reach through time?
For much, much more information http://www.LongNow.org
Winter Afternoon (today), McNear Building (1886), Petaluma, California.
Petaluma, where I live, lies on the northern reaches of San Francisco Bay at the head of the Petaluma River, a tidal estuary. It has long supplied San Francisco with the agricultural products from Sonoma County and beyond via the waterway. The close links with the city have intensified and diversified over the years. The architecture of Petaluma reflects that of San Francisco at every developmental stage.
Flag at half mast - Fort Mason 1-10-11
The flag at Fort Mason hangs slack at half mast in response to Saturday's shooting rampage in Arizona in which six people were killed, including 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, and fourteen wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. At this moment Rep.Giffords is still in critical condition. A memorial service for the victims was held today in Tuscon.
