What would YOU do with $21,000,000 and the use of Central Park?

I can't say I would be able to anything with the two according to these rules. Transient 'Art' like what those two guys do... I don't consider that art. Wrapping an island in plastic, building a fence of umbrellas... these are not selective interpretations of reality. They're just attention getters; making a statement of nothing.

Then on the other hand is 'Transient' Art: ice sculptures, for example. Those can be art, but due to the nature of the material, are vulnerable and don't last long. Ice sculptures are cool, but the real experience is watching them being carved.

There are few things of beauty that exist but for a moment and are gone that I actually love. Sunsets/sunrises; a large field surrounded by tall trees, with thousands of fireflies, and a cloudless, clear night sky above; thunderstorms. While these aren't art, they are beautiful, and can move me as if they were.

For the most part, I vastly prefer more tangible forms of art. My favorite form of art happens to be music. Music is special because it actually crosses this boundary between tangible/transient art in a way. It's a form of art that you experience, and then it's done, and you only have the memory of the experience. Recordings are possible for repeated experiences of a piece of music, but more important is the possibility of learning how to play the piece yourself. Then it resides in memory in more than one way, so that it isn't quite tangible (and then only by the sense of hearing), but isn't quite transient, either.

Wait... what were we talking about? Sorry, got carried away there, but I don't feel like deleting it.
 
I was at Robert's Boot Bar on one of the nights when BR5-49 recorded Live From Roberts. I have the album, of course. And it's great. I love it.

There are a few little sounds and even comments made in there that, if you weren't there, you just wouldn't understand. What does "That's my kind of fire marshal" mean? To the rest of the world, it's just some sort of random comment thrown in. To those of us who were there, it brings back memories of a fun night.

The album is good, but it fails to capture the whole work of art transient art that a performance like that is.

I have a recording of one of the Chile Shack Shows at the Blue Bird Cafe, a show which I also attended. The music is all there. But none of the flavor is. Some things can't be captured. They must, by their nature, be transient.
 
I don't know what I would do with that money and the use of central park for 16 days.

But I can tell you one thing for sure, whatever I would do you would be able to see it from space.
It would be big, and brighter than a million Surefire e2e's.

It would be something that would bring together all the people in NY and America in general into central park, and it would cost much less than 21 million.
 
ohen cepel said:
Since I loath cities with every fiber of my body I would use the cash to buy all the surrounding real estate and bull doze it to expand the park.
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

For only $21,000,000 you couldn't buy the sidewalks in that part of town! The Metropolitan Museum of Art on the East Side, American Museum of Natural History on the West Side, and some of the most expensive apartments in New York all around. :D
 
Cougar Allen said:
... the only limit is the hazard to low-flying planes -- and I'll bribe the FAA to route planes around it -- if the government will let me have Central Park surely they'll let me have some airspace above it --
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Low-flying planes over Manhattan??? Maybe a few police or news helicopters ...
 
This doesn't exactly answer the question but let me say this:

I used to live a block away from Central Park, so I consider it my backyard. I have since then moved but I went to visit New York last week to see the Gates. I must have spent at least six hours in the park and I loved the installation. I am not usually a fan of Christo but this project really floated my boat.

Yes, it cost a ton of money, but it is self-financed through the sale of photos and mementos like all of Christo's projects. If you saw it you probably had an experience that will last a lifetime. If you don't like it, well after 16 days all is back to normal.

aquina
 
Gollnick said:
....For $21,000,000 I would install a massive refrigeration system and make a Catherderal of Ice... in July. For 21M$, we could probably keep that going for a week or ten days. Then, we shut off the refrigeration and it just melts away over the coming few days. The melting away would be as much a part of the performance as anything.....
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I like it! Impressive and ephemeral at the same time! :cool:

(just don't let Kristo near the place - he'll just wrap the park in pink vinyl. :rolleyes: )
 
underaged! said:
Knife show/BFC meeting.

With pizza and ice cream pary. :rolleyes:

pay for air fare for everyone, to and from.
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My vote is with underaged!. The first thing I thought of was that famous NYC pizza, but the next was the cheescake...
 
I'd cover the entire ground in a thick layer of flower petals. They would be all different colors and arranged by artists so that when you looked down on it from above, it would look like a Van Gough painting.

~ashes
 
Igloos! This time of year, they would probably last 16 days at least, and it's something people can use.

P.S. When those same guys put up all the umbrellas here in CA, I went to go see them, and big whoop-te-do. You didn't have to be there in person to appreciate it. It sucked just as much as on TV.
 
Cougar Allen said:
No, it has to be New York champagne! And maybe we'll do it again in San Franciso with California champagne -- but we won't use French champagne unless we do it in France. :cool:
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So how about a travelling art show, shooting whatever the local beverage is?
England: Bitter or Cider
Ireland: Whisky
Netherlands: Bok beer
Czech Republic: Budwieser Budvar
Poland: Wodka
USA: Mountain Dew ( :) )
etc.
 
s0laris said:
So how about a travelling art show, shooting whatever the local beverage is?
USA: Mountain Dew ( :) )
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No, that would offend the Mormons.

Can't use beer, wine, or alcohol because that would offend... well... the Mormons... and the Muslims... and the fundamentalist Christians.

Can't use Root Beer since the Mothers Against Drunk driving might think it was still a reference to alcoholic beverage and be offended.

Milk or chocolate milk could be seen as a racial reference and offend the NAACP, so we can't use that. Besides, milk might offend the Vegans and the animal rights crowd.

Lemonaide? Yes, lemonaide would be good. It would conjure up fond memories of hot summer afternoons spent in the shade of the porch, gently rocking in the swing while sipping a cool drink.... and watching the slaves bring in the cotton! Lemonaide? What are you thinking!?! We might as well just fly a confederate flag and play Dixie for heaven's sake. Of course we can't use lemonaide; what a stupid idea!

Orange juice might work... as long as it's organic and contains no genentically-modified oranges. But excluding GMOs would offend the farm lobby and might be a violation of the GATT treaty, so OJ is out.

Apple juice? Only if it's domestically-produced and union-picked without illegal farm labor. But excluding illegal farm labor might offend the migrant worker lobby. And what if the apples have Alar on them?

Of course, using water would be a waste of natural resources and probably contribute to global warming, so that's out.
 
what would i do with 21,000,000 and central park? I suppose now that it's done. I would use 10,000 to clean up the mess made with the gates. 30,000 to hire a hit man to kill the idiots that put up the gates so it doesn't happen anywhere else. And... spend the rest buying new land to exspand the park.
 
$21,000,000 over 16 days is about $15/second. So, keeping with the fountain idea, which I like, how about a money fountain?

But, we wouldn't just blow dollar bills into the air. Some of it would be dollars, but we'd get paper money from all over the world and mix it all up.

IT'S RAINING MONEY IN CENTRAL PARK!

I think that would probably attract the public to the park.
 
It's occurred to me people might have a different view of it if it didn't cost so much. If the local Cub Scouts had built the gates out of scrap wood and burlap bags everybody would think it was a great idea.

Or if some half-crazed artist had saved up his wages working at a gas station ... well, I don't know, maybe then people would say the whole idea was crazy....

But what about the Somerville Gates? (Click on the link I posted above if you haven't already.) I don't hear any outcry about the Somerville Gates; nobody saying they're an eyesore or a stoopid idea or self-indulgent or any of those things some people are saying. But what if he had built them out of solid gold and diamonds and rubies and emeralds and spent millions on it?
 
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