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Not A Cornfield
"Not A Cornfield" was a 2005 art project that transformed a industrial brownfield (today part of Los Angeles State Historic Park in the historic center of Los Angeles) into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle. The project took place north of Chinatown. Lauren Bon created this work with funds from the Annenberg Foundation and considered the piece to be a sculpture. The installation cost $3 million and took place at the proposed site of Los Angeles State Historic Park, which had been referred to as "The Cornfield", because of the crops growing there prior to its industrial development."L.A. THEN AND NOW; Pasadena's Gold Line Will Travel a History-Laden Route" (13 July 2008) ''Los Angeles Times'' Fifteen hundred truck loads of soil were transported to the site and one million seeds were planted. Some people complained that the project delayed the construction of the public park at that site, that the project was approved too quickly, and that it was a waste of money. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brownfield Land
In urban planning, brownfield land is any previously developed land that is not currently in use. It may be potentially contaminated, but this is not required for the area to be considered brownfield. The term is also used to describe land previously used for industrial or commercial purposes with known or suspected pollution including soil contamination due to hazardous waste. Examples sites include abandoned factories, landfills, dry cleaning establishments and gas stations. Typical contaminants include hydrocarbon spillages, solvents and pesticides, as well as heavy metals like lead, tributyl tins and asbestos. Many contaminated brownfield sites sit unused for decades as involuntary parks because cleaning cost is more than land worth after redevelopment. Previously unknown underground wastes can increase the cost for study and clean-up. Acquisition, adaptive re-use, and disposal of a brownfield site requires advanced and specialized appraisal analysis techniques. Remedi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodegradable
Biodegradation is the breakdown of organic matter by microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi. It is generally assumed to be a natural process, which differentiates it from composting. Composting is a human-driven process in which biodegradation occurs under a specific set of circumstances. The process of biodegradation is threefold: first an object undergoes biodeterioration, which is the mechanical weakening of its structure; then follows biofragmentation, which is the breakdown of materials by microorganisms; and finally assimilation, which is the incorporation of the old material into new cells. In practice, almost all chemical compounds and materials are subject to biodegradation, the key element being time. Things like vegetables may degrade within days, while glass and some plastics take many millennia to decompose. A standard for biodegradability used by the European Union is that greater than 90% of the original material must be converted into , water and minerals by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is also part of Central Los Angeles. Downtown Los Angeles is divided into neighborhoods and districts, some overlapping. Most districts are named for the activities concentrated there now or historically, e.g. the Arts, Civic Center, Fashion, Banking, Theater, Toy, and Jewelry districts. It is the hub for the city's urban rail transit system plus the Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink commuter rail system for Southern California. Banks, department stores, and movie palaces at one time drew residents and visitors of all socioeconomic classes downtown, but the area declined economically especially after the 1950s. It remained an important center—in the Civic Center, of government business; on Bunker Hill, of banking, and along Broadway, of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guerrilla Gardening
Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property. It encompasses a diverse range of people and motivations, ranging from gardeners who spill over their legal boundaries to gardeners with a political purpose, who seek to provoke change by using guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action. This practice has implications for land rights and land reform; aiming to promote re-consideration of land ownership in order to assign a new purpose or reclaim land that is perceived to be in neglect or misused. Some gardeners work at night, in relative secrecy, in an effort to make the area more useful or attractive, while others garden during the day for publicity. History Two of the earliest celebrated guerrilla gardeners were Gerrard Winstanley, of the Diggers in Surrey, England (1649), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corn Construction
Corn construction refers to the use of corn (maize) in construction. The tassel, leaf, silk, cob in husks, and the stalk are the parts of corn. According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture, "corn can be made into fuel, abrasives, solvents, charcoal, animal feed, bedding for animals, insulation, adhesives, and more. The kernel is used as oil, bran, starch, glutamates, animal feed, and solvents. The silk is combined with other parts of the corn plant to be used as part of animal feed, silage, and fuels. Husks are made into dolls and used as filling materials. The stalk is used to make paper, wallboard, silage, syrup, and rayon (artificial silk)." History Corn has long been used in manufacturing. There were a number innovations in the United States in the early 1900s. For example, Henry Ford's conceptual Model U car featured tires with corn-based filler and a corn-based fabric roof. The Corn Palace, a building in Mitchell, South Dakota, is decorated with murals and designs ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Installation Art
Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art, land art or art intervention; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap. History Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces. The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their " evocative" qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet. Many installations are site-specific in that they are designed to exist only in the space for which they were created, appealing to qualities evident in a three-dimensional immersive medium. Artistic collectives such as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Art
Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & movements. Abrams, 2002. (U.S. edition of Styles, Schools and Movements, by Amy Dempsey) but that also includes examples from many countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.http://www.land-arts.com Land art. Concerns of the art mov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drum Circle
A drum circle is any group of people playing (usually) hand-drums and percussion in a circle. They are distinct from a drumming group or troupe in that the drum circle is an end in itself rather than preparation for a performance. They can range in size from a handful of players to circles with thousands of participants. Drum circles are related to other community-based music gatherings such as flute circles or vocal improvisation groups. In 1991, during testimony before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart stated: Typically, people gather to drum in drum "circles" with others from the surrounding community. The drum circle offers equality because there is no head or tail. It includes people of all ages. The main objective is to share rhythm and get in tune with each other and themselves. To form a group consciousness. To entrain and resonate. By entrainment, I mean that a new voice, a collective voice, emerges from the group as th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles State Historic Park
Los Angeles State Historic Park (LASHP) is a California State Park within the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. Also known as the Cornfield, the former brownfield consists of a long open space between Spring Street and the tracks of the Metro Gold Line. Located outside the main commercial and residential area in the northeast portion of Chinatown, the area is adjacent and southeast of the Elysian Park neighborhood. History This former site of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company's River Station (1876−1901) is considered the "Ellis Island of Los Angeles" where new arrivals from the East first disembarked. Corn leaking from train cars and sprouting along the tracks gave rise to the nickname The Cornfield. The site was established as a California state park in 2001. Park development In 2001, a five-foot section of the historical Zanja Madre irrigation canal was uncovered. In 2005, the former industrial site was transformed into a productive cornfield for one seaso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil
Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former term specifically to displaced soil. Soil consists of a solid phase of minerals and organic matter (the soil matrix), as well as a porous phase that holds gases (the soil atmosphere) and water (the soil solution). Accordingly, soil is a three-state system of solids, liquids, and gases. Soil is a product of several factors: the influence of climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), organisms, and the soil's parent materials (original minerals) interacting over time. It continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness, soil ecologists regard soil as an ecosystem. Most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramic art, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or Molding (process), moulded or Casting, cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
