James Turrell - Roden Crater (whole video is worth watching)
This just may end up being my favorite project of all time. James Turrell is rightly celebrated as a master manipulator of light - electromagnetic radiation mind you, wandering cosmic energy - which he renders almost tangible.
There is much to discuss here:
James Turrell built the plane he flew to search for the proper site.
The volcanic rim is shaved into a curve such that when reclining in the middle of the crater, one sees the globe of the sky as the spherical planet and the ruddy earth as sky! Sky-shaping! (14:30)
The 400,000 year old crater has been hollowed into corridors and specially located chambers to let visitors feel the presence of specific gathered starlight - radiant energy millions of years old. In this dramatic stage set of protracted geologic time we can witness the even older play of celestial processes, the “music of light.”
“Activated by the movement of the sun, moon and stars, the chambers within the crater are aligned to astronomical events for the next 12,000 years; one chamber enables the viewer to see and feel the rotation of the earth by looking at the night sky. In another, visitors will be able to observe a cycle of the moon called the lower lunar standstill, which takes place in the south-western sky every 18.6 years.”
One supporter, the Italian collector Count Panza di Buomo, is so impressed with the concept of Roden Crater that he believes that the experience has the potential to rid the world of social ills:
‘If everyone were to have this kind of experience the use of drugs would disappear, no one would commit suicide and violence would stop.’
At the very least it should make us pause to reflect: “we are all made of star stuff.”