The installation generated a lot of media interest - including many phallic innuendos - and drew the ire of the Australian Christian Lobby.
The installation generated so much interest that Data Garden launched a Kickstarter to bring the instrument used in Quartet, MIDI Sprout, to the public.
This is prima facie good -- the installations generate clean energy from a practically infinite source (even if they pose still unsolved problems of the disposal of radioactive wastes and the decommissioning of aging and obsolete systems).
It doesn't matter how much chatter or twittering the Gormley installation generates.
The multi-room installation generates "narratives about the future of the human species in the post-genetic engineering age," according to a YBCA statement.
The play's live, site-specific adaptation for this performance is designed to resonate both with Frederick Law Olmsted's landscape design and Nakaya's climate-responsive fog installation at the Arboretum, "Fog × Hill". Calling fog "the most generous medium" for creating art, Nakaya's special installation generates intermittent clouds of pure-water vapor every half hour from dawn to dusk.
On the other hand, in its matter-of-fact Minimalism, it has little of the incredible lightness of being that Pipilotti Rist's trippy video installation generated in the MoMA atrium three years ago.
It is an "interactive audio-visual installation generating an infinite combination of projected worlds in a physical environment using an industrial robotic arm" that also features BBC-accented voiceovers discuss string theory, quantum mechanics, and dark energy.
Working with SSE Energy, the installation now generates 15 20% of its electricity from solar cells, while rainwater is collected from the roof to wash boats, in substituton for mains water.
In remarks during a ribbon-cutting ceremony today, Gov. George E. Pataki said he also expected the installation to generate thousands of additional jobs in the Hudson Valley area for contractors and suppliers catering to the factory.
