Artwork:  Beanstalk Ocularis

 

In this work, I’m considering the turning of protected security views of a next-generation transportation site and its operations, from sea level to orbital counterweight and interconnecting transports, outward—to public views. Contrasted with other large-scale cargo transportation systems such as container ship vessels, rail, and trucking systems, whose loading/unloading and transit operations happen in the day-to-day background, mostly outside of public consciousness, the Beanstalk Ocularis broadcasts a constant stream of images that show operations at all levels, opening up this previously hidden activity. Situated on a moveable platform in Lake Michigan near Chicago, this future

transportation device would carry humans and cargo from the surface of the Earth to a geo-stationary orbital position, from which other transportation means would connect the planet to the Moon.  Video views of different locations at the elevator, viewable at the platform level, reveal the ongoing process of ferrying people and objects to and from the orbital platform, illuminating what is being moved to and from the Moon.