In this interactive kiosk (developed in Macromedia
Director) interlinked narratives on seven topics are accessed
from its very simple onscreen interface.
The work's interwoven sections of content include:
1) Airborn, a personal history of flight and aircraft.
2) Moonshot, some rocketry history plus personal experiences
such as shaking hands as a boy with Gemini astronauts McDivitt
and White.
3) Air Frisco, a narrative
that includes early San Francisco aviators such as Lincoln Beachey
and Art Smith, who both performed daring stunts at the 1915 Panama-Pacific
Exposition...where Beachey fell to his death as thousands watched.
4) Schematoids, a gallery of artwork
using semiconductor circuitry motifs.
5) Half the Sky which begins with a cartoon with astronomical
themes "Birth of the Universe" drawn by the artist for
his college humor magazine in the 1970s, then goes on to contemplate
some women's contributions to flight, space and media.
6) Art and Science, exploring the relationships between
these two fields, these two realms of thought and endeavor.
7) and Come to Comet, a poem in appreciation of the Hale-Bopp
comet.
The display's mural-like painted facade (Politec mural acrylics
on plywood) depicts an Estes model rocket, the U.S.-Canadian military
AVRO flying saucer prototype aircraft of the 1950s (shown here
piloted by "heliocentric" jazzman Sun Ra), a subchasing
P3 Orion airplane, the blimp Macon at its Moffett Field hangar,
self-proclaimed UFO contactees of the 1960s like "the Mystic
Barber" and other unearthbound motifs.
"Flight Paths" was exhibited November
1997 through March 1998 at NASA Ames Research Center Visitors'
Center at Moffett Field as a part of the exhbit "Artists'
Uninhibited View of Space Science" along with the artists
Colette Gaiter, Leah Lubin and Myrrh.
Prior to the development of "Flight Paths'" illustrated
interactive software, the facade was exhibited with looped video
segments playing in its cut-out windows at Artists' Television
Access in San Francisco during the month of May 1997.
Return to Opening.