outdoor & LONG-TERM
MASS MoCA is porous. Your experience of new art and its juxtaposition to interesting, historic settings can be continued outside, in our intricate network of courtyards, roadways, and industrial artifacts. Off our factory campus, MASS MoCA has helped artists install sound installations, sculpture, and even a bus shelter, which this guide will help you discover.
RIVE R STRE ET
2 3
1. Tree Logic 1
THE SPEED WAY
6
MARSHALL STREET
COURTYARD B
2. The Clocktower Project 3. Pavilion* 4. all utopias fell* 5. All Those Vanished Engines*
4
6. Primary Separation
5
PARKING
ST. ANTHONY’S
9
7. Harmonic Bridge 8. Bus Stand 9. Music for a Quarry
7 ROUTE 2
8
* Open seasonally, May–October
1 COURTYARD B
Tree Logic, 1999 Natalie Jeremijenko ( Australian, b. 1966 ) _____ Natalie Jeremijenko bridges the worlds of art, science, and data mining with a strong interest in systems of nature and our relationship to plants and animals. She has created projects such as Feral Robots—roving robotic dogs that can sniff out contaminants, monitor pollutants, and even act as breathalyzers—and Ooz, an ongoing investigation into the relationship between human/animal interactions at zoos. With the collective Bureau of Inverse Technology, Jeremijenko further explored these ideas in Sparrow Report (2003), an audio database which documented the widespread decrease in the population of sparrows in New York and London. For Tree Logic, Jeremijenko took six live sugar maple trees (iconic in the Berkshires) and built a truss system allowing them to be nourished and grow while hanging upside down. The art of the piece is not found in its condition at any single point in time but in the change of the trees over time (in fact, the first trees, which grew too big for the system, were planted right side up behind the Clark in nearby Williamstown, and have adaptively uncurled their branches). Trees are dynamic natural systems reactive to both phototropic and gravitropic forces, and Tree Logic reveals this dynamism. The familiar, almost iconic shape of the tree in nature is subverted, for, as the tree grows, its limbs curl upwards to reach towards the sun. Much like the art of bonsai, Jeremijenko plays with ideas of a manaltered landscape, raising questions about the very nature of the natural. Supported by the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute and the Massachusetts Cultural Council
2 COURTYARD B
The Clocktower Project, 1999 Christina Kubisch ( German, b. 1948 ) _____ Built in 1882 by Arnold Print Works, a textile-printing mill, the clocktower was originally a three-story external stairway and fire exit. As Arnold prospered, a fourth story and clocktower spire were added in 1892. During Arnold’s tenancy, and through the years that Sprague Electric Company occupied the site (1933–1986), the bells of the clocktower marked every quarter hour of the working day for thousands of employees and townspeople. Today, the renovated tower still houses the original carillon bells and clock mechanism; the sounds, however, are from Christina Kubisch’s The Clocktower Project. Kubisch—a Berlin-based composer and sound designer—was moved by the fact that the clock had not kept time, nor had its bells rung, since Sprague Electric Company vacated the site in 1986. Kubisch believed that the absence of the bell sounds was keenly felt by the city, so she restored the clocktower as an instrument in preparation for MASS MoCA’s opening in 1999. Kubisch recorded a database of sounds based on her own playing of the bells—ringing them with their clappers, or hammering, brushing, and striking them with various implements. She installed a series of solar sensors around the tower to relay information about the intensity and location of the sun to a computer inside the tower. This computer interprets the solar information and combines Kubisch’s repertoire of bell sounds in precise response to current sunlight conditions. Thus, a sunny summer morning generates bright metallic tones, while a gray winter afternoon evokes soft, melancholy sounds. A passing cloud changes everything. Supported by the Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, the Goethe-Institut Boston, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Mary & Henry Flynt, and Solarex
3 COURTYARD C Open Seasonally May–October
Pavilion, 2004 Dré Wapenaar ( Dutch, b. 1961) _____ Dré Wapenaar works primarily with tent imagery, creating innovative spaces that foster social encounters and encourage new perspectives on familiar rituals. His utopian sculptures offer alternatives to conventional architecture, re-thinking definitions of public and private spaces and presenting opportunities for both meditation and exchange. For MASS MoCA’s 2004 exhibition, The Interventionists, Wapenaar exhibited two works: his Buckminster Fuller-inspired Birthing Tent (2003), a water-filled sphere with a view to the sky, and Death Bivouac (2002), an inhabitable artwork used to suggest a new approach to the process of death. In Pavilion, Wapenaar extends his investigation into the design of social spaces with a pavilion for the museum’s central courtyard. Courtyard C— located directly behind the museum’s box office—is the site of musical performances, films, art openings, weddings, and other special events. Brazilian redwood decking (harvested from plantings certified as environmentally sound) and a series of overlapping, colored canopies provide an inviting setting for daytime visitors as well as nighttime audiences. Supplying shade and protection from the elements, the canvas, steel, and wood structure extends the museum’s space out of doors, giving the public a place to read, rest, eat, and drink, while maintaining the courtyard as a lively site for cabaret and theater. Created as part of NL: A Season of Dutch Art in the Berkshires, coordinated by the Department of Press and Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of The Netherlands in New York and Service Centre for International Cultural Activities (SICA) in Amsterdam Supported by The Netherlands Culture Fund through SICA; the Fund for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture; and the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam
4 THE Speed way Open Seasonally May–October
all utopias fell, 2010 Michael Oatman ( American, b. 1964 ) _____ Michael Oatman’s project began with the design of a 50kw field of solar panels on the roof of MASS MoCA’s largest gallery building (Building 5), which includes an encoded message (still unknown to anybody other than the artist). He began by exploring the history of solar energy alongside the history of Sprague Electric Company—maker of capacitors—which occupied this site from 1942 to 1986. Merging these histories with science fiction gave birth to Oatman’s all utopias fell, a project in three interrelated parts: The Shining, The Library of the Sun, and Codex Solis. The Shining is a 1970s-era “satellite” that crash-landed at MASS MoCA. This repurposed Airstream trailer—with large parachutes and active solar panels—is inspired by an earlier era of pulp aeronauts like Buck Rogers, as well as the works of Giotto, Jules Verne, and NASA. Visitors can climb a staircase in the Boiler House and enter into the craft where they will encounter The Library of the Sun. Hybridizing a domestic space, a laboratory, and a library, it has the feel of a hermitage, where the occupant will “be right back”... only it is now 30 years later. Video relating to the sun and its mythology flickers to life on the cockpit’s instrumentation panels, and a stained glass window now occupies the spot that was once the windshield of the vehicle. From inside the craft, visitors can look back towards Building 5 to see Oatman’s Codex Solis, a massive 230-foot long field of solar panels, which generate 3 percent of the power consumed by MASS MoCA (additional panels on other buildings add to this by about 20 percent). Mirrors are interspersed in the middle of the solar array, suggesting an absent text by an unnamed author. Supported by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Renewable Energy Trust and the Massachusetts Cultural Council
5 THE Speed way Open Seasonally May–October
All Those Vanished Engines, 2010 Stephen Vitiello ( American, b. 1964 ) _____ Stephen Vitiello created All Those Vanished Engines especially for the MASS MoCA Boiler House, a relic from the industrial past of the site, which once heated the factory buildings that now make up the museum. Starting with the inherent resonance of the pipes and metal drums in the space, Vitiello built a layered sound environment that can be explored throughout the first two floors of the building. The narrative (and title) for All Those Vanished Engines comes from a commissioned text by Williamstown novelist Paul Park. The story serves as the thematic structure and blueprint for Vitiello’s installation. The text provides a possible reading of the building as a façade for a secret, experimental project to explore the industrial production of sound. Told by two narrators visiting a fictional worker of the Boiler House (voiced by Vitiello and John Sprague, a member of the Sprague family that once owned this site), Park’s story recalls the fictionalized history of a building haunted by its past. Park writes: “After all, sound was what had animated the entire structure, in memory, and in the actual past, and was still animating it, for example, right now.” In Vitiello’s hands, Park’s text brings back the audio of the Boiler House’s “ vanished engines,” mixing ambient sound with haunting excerpts from the story. An ever-changing soundscape follows viewers through the space, and at any given moment sounds alternate between moments of clatter and calm. This is a space to spend time in, exploring the building’s unique character as Vitiello’s audio washes over you. Jeremy Choate, lighting design; Paul Park, text; Bob Bielecki, sound engineer Supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund
6 MARSHALL STREET
Primary Separation, 2004 Don Gummer ( American, b. 1946 ) _____ Don Gummer came of age alongside a generation of artists exploring both minimalist sculpture and the landscape. Artists Donald Judd and Carl Andre explored cool forms and geometry while championing industrial manufacturing. Around the same time, Robert Smithson and James Turrell were creating “earthworks,” or large site-specific installations made in— and, often, of—the landscape. Gummer straddles these two movements with his keen interest in forms in nature and his masterful use of industrially produced materials such as steel, concrete, and bronze. In 2004, MASS MoCA commissioned this new work by Gummer for the plaza outside the T. William Lewis Building on Marshall Street. The work, titled Primary Separation, was first designed by Gummer in 1969 after he finished his undergraduate degree at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and in preparation for enrolling as an MFA student at Yale University. Until this project was realized at MASS MoCA, the work existed only in maquette form: this is its first full-scale realization. The installation consists of a massive granite boulder, 12 feet long by 6 feet tall, sawed in half. The stone halves— separated by just an 11-inch gap—are dramatically suspended 10 feet above ground, with a system of stainless steel supports and cables. Gummer’s original inspiration for Primary Separation was a stone that he felt resembled sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s aerodynamic work entitled Fish (1930). In using the stone, Gummer was also invoking Marcel Duchamp’s early 20th-century concept of the “readymade” sculpture (turning everyday mass-produced objects into art). Instead of focusing on Duchamp’s manmade objects, Gummer turns around the readymade by linking it to nature. Supported by the William E. Simon Foundation, the Cynthia L. and William E. Simon, Jr. Foundation, and the Hidden Pond Foundation
7 ROUTE 2 UNDERPASS plays constantly 8 am –10 pm
Harmonic Bridge, 1988 Bruce Odland ( American, b. 1952 ) & Sam Auinger ( American, b. 1956 ) _____ Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger collaborate on sound works that explore the natural resonance of space, sifting through background noise to isolate and amplify the harmonies found within. For MASS MoCA, Odland and Auinger created Harmonic Bridge, which began with the attachment of two 16-foot tuning tubes to the guardrails on the north side of the Route 2 overpass next to MASS MoCA. The length of the tubes determines the precise pitch of the sound they capture, a result of the shifts the sound waves make as they travel the length of the tube (much like a pipe organ). Inside each tube, a microphone is placed at changing intervals. These locations emphasize different harmonic ranges resulting in a variation of the C-note timbre. The difference in timbre between the two tuning tubes is analogous to that between a cello and a violin playing the same note: though the pitch is the same, the sound is slightly different. As traffic passes by, its noise resonates inside the tubes. High-pitched sirens and voices generate higher harmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates low ones. The sound is then carried from the microphones down the tubes to a control room, where the tones are amplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speakers under the bridge. There are no electronic effects added. The sounds have been simply extracted from the traffic noise above. The pedestrian under the bridge hears one layer of tuned sound from the speakers mixed with sound from actual traffic under the overpass on Marshall Street. The work requires that we focus our ears on the bridge as an instrument, and tune ourselves to the harmonies built into our environment.
8 MAin STREET
Bus Stand, 2012 Victoria Palermo ( American, b. 1952 ) _____ Turn right out of MASS MoCA’s parking lot onto Marshall Street Take second left onto Main Street Bus Stand is on the right in approximately 100 yards
Inspired by her 2010 Kidspace artist-in-residency in the North Adams middle school to create a work of art that would combine the functional with the aesthetic, Victoria Palermo reconceived a bus shelter as witty homage to Sol LeWitt, whose work is on quasi-permanent display at MASS MoCA. Applying whimsical materials and approaches to practical objects is not unusual for Palermo: in 2002, for example, she created a spectacular set of live grass chairs and footstools for Kidspace. Her idea here was to create a focal point of color and delight on Main Street, brightening the streetscape and bringing a moment of unexpected color to the often mundane time spent waiting for a bus to arrive. Replacing a 1980s brown shelter covered in graffiti with a modern, colorful sculpture-shelter was one of the museum’s contributions to other renewal and beautification efforts in the city. Palermo recalls the Sol LeWitt wall drawings at MASS MoCA through her careful choice of color and powerfully rectilinear geometric shapes. LeWitt, a conceptual artist, is known for his deceptively simple geometric forms and architecturally scaled wall drawings. Sometimes his shapes may appear to recede in space, or to project into the viewer’s space, while others strictly adhere to the flat planar surface of the wall itself. While LeWitt uses a 2-dimensional surface, Palermo expands this play with space and form using solid plexi-blocks of color. The relationship between color and patterns that form the bus stand was derived from LeWitt’s arrangement of vibrant colors, too. Depending on where you stand in the bus stand, the transparent planes of colored Plexiglas may overlap to optically mix new colors. A collaboration of Kidspace at MASS MoCA, the City of North Adams, DownStreet Art, and the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council
9 Natural Bridge State Park plays daily just after sunset
Music for a Quarry, 1999 Walter Fähndrich ( Swiss, b. 1944 ) _____ The Hoosac Marble Quarry at North Adams’ 48-acre Natural Bridge State Park was once mined for architectural decoration, gravestones, hearthstone, mantles, and even a 28-foot tall pillar at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, state house. A mill was built on site in 1810, and after switching ownership multiple times was destroyed by fire in 1947. The site then operated as a privately run tourist attraction before the state bought it in 1985. The site of the quarry has now been given over to nature yet still retains its shape from the past mining, which carved out a 100-yard diameter semi-circle in the rock façade. In Music for a Quarry by Walter Fähndrich, clear tones call across the natural amphitheater of the Hoosac Marble Quarry nightly from ten speakers, equally spaced along its circumference. Working with the latitude and longitude of the quarry, a computer program begins the music at the same solar time (rather than clock time) each night. The start time (near 8 or 9pm in the summer and 4pm in the winter) changes as the spatial relationship between the earth and sun changes. The first tone appears at the precise moment of astronomical sunset, a moment that is both permanently fixed and changing daily. During this fifteen-minute period, the burden of comprehending the physical space shifts slowly from the eye to the ear as the sounds are traced to their sources. Supported by the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Canton of Zug, Bank Leu AG, the Swiss Center Foundation, the City of Zug, the Emil and Rosa Richterich-Beck Foundation, Pro Helvetia (The Arts Council of Switzerland), and Drs. H. and H. Medicus
Proceed straight out of MASS MoCA’s parking lot through traffic light onto St. Anthony’s Drive At end of street take right onto Holden Street and an immediate left onto Routes 2 & 8 At fork (in .9 mile), bear left onto Route 8 towards Clarksburg After a half mile, turn left onto McCauley Road Visit aa.usno. navy.mil/data for astronomical sunset times
1040 MASS MoCA Way North Adams, MA 01247 413.662.2111 massmoca.org