Bell Circles II

A couple of earlier posts here talked about the pair of bells in front of the Oregon Convention Center, donated by Portland's sister cities of Sapporo, Japan, and Ulsan, South Korea. I mentioned there was also an acoustic art installation connected to the bells: Bell Circles II is an automated system that rings the bells every so often. Signs simply say the bells ring without warning, but they allegedly operate on a set schedule. Supposedly the Sapporo bell rings hourly, while the Ulsan bell rings on a schedule that evolves over time and resets on each solstice and equinox.. I say "allegedly" and "supposedly" because I was at the Convention Center recently and I had the idea of filming the Sapporo bell ringing. I'd checked YouTube and couldn't find any video of either of the bells ringing, so it seemed like this would fill an important cultural gap or something. So I started filming just before the top of the hour, and kept filming for four minutes, and came away with a boring video of the bell just sitting there, doing nothing. Later it occurred to me that "hourly" doesn't necessarily mean "at the top of the hour". Still, I feel like I've made a good faith effort to record the bell doing its thing, and I don't really feel like going back and hanging around for an hour or more to see if it ever actually rings. So I'm just going to go with the video clip I already have, and imagine that the bell's playing a famous John Cage piece. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Ulsan Bell of Sisterhood

A few months ago I wrote a post about the Sapporo Friendship Bell in front of the Oregon Convention Center, a gift from Portland's sister city of Sapporo, Japan. I mentioned briefly that there was a second bell nearby, and suggested there would be a post about it sooner or later, when I got around to it. Today we're visiting the second bell, the Ulsan Bell of Sisterhood which was a gift from Ulsan, South Korea, another of Portland's sister cities.

A note on the Portland-Ulsan Sister City Association's Facebook page calls it "a copy of the famous Shilla Dynasty bell". The famous bell in question is probably the Bell of King Seongdeok, cast in 771 AD during the Silla Dynasty period. Portland's copy is obviously a scaled-down version of the original bell. A larger copy, the "Korean Bell of Friendship", is located in a park in Los Angeles.

In addition to the bells themselves, the bell-ringing system is a public artwork in its own right. Bell Circles II is a sound installation created by composer Robert Coburn. The system rings the two bells according to a programmable and varying schedule. I'm not clear on exactly how this schedule works; signs near the bells merely warn visitors that they ring without notice and are quite loud. I'm thinking the sound installation stuff deserves a blog post of its own, but for that I'll need a video or audio clip of at least one of the bells ringing. And to do that I'll need to figure out the ringing schedule, since I'm not going to hang around in front of the convention center all day filming bells just in case. That's just not going to happen. The news items below give some clues, but it could easily have been reprogrammed any time between 1990 and today.

Anyway, the Oregonian covered the Ulsan bell when it was donated in January 1989. The article explains that the original concept would have included a third bell, donated by Beaverton's sister city Hsinchu, Taiwan, along with some aluminum wind pipes, and continues:

According to Coburn, the $30,000 bell is modeled after a 7th-century Buddhist temple bell. It's decorated with images of Korean angels and topped by a dragon. An inscription commemorates the sister-city relationship.

When installed, the three bells will give off deeply resonant tones that will serve as aural landmarks at the convention center, orienting visitors to the building's entrances, Coburn said. One bell will be in the main courtyard and the other two will be at entrances. Each bell has a specific pitch. A computer will activate automatic striking devices that will sound a slow melodic pattern.

Coburn will arrange the cyclic patterns so they change over long periods of time, coinciding with the changes in seasons. On each equinox and solstice, the cycle will restart, Coburn said.

In addition to the temple bells, clusters of two or three aluminum wind pipes will hang in trees around the center. The pipes will be oriented to the wind and will sound pitches that relate to the bronze bells.

Much of Coburn's music is concerned with sound and the environment. The bell project is an attempt to neutralize urban noise, welcome visitors, orient them to the building, and provide sanctuary, he said.

The convention center opened in 1990, and the paper's architecture critic went on at length about all the art. After a bit about the big Foucault pendulum in an atrium, he spent a few paragraphs on the bells:

As the pendulum marks time inside with its metronomic swing, two bronze Oriental bells outside will mark time in sound. In a project conceptualized by composer Robert Coburn, Portland's sister cities Sapporo, Japan, and Ulsan, South Korea, each donated bells. They will be struck with a computer automated device according to a composition created by Coburn.

At this writing, Coburn had not completed his score, but he explained his two main goals are to orient people to the convention center's outdoor spaces with what he describes as ``soundmarks'' as opposed to landmarks. And, he wants to call attention to two scales of time.

``The intention is not a musical composition,'' Coburn said, ``but to make references to how we measure time versus how nature does.'' He explained that the Sapporo bell will be struck hourly while the Ulsan bell will be struck on a daily and seasonal cycle. ``On the equinox and solstice, they will be struck together at noon,'' Coburn added.

Three other wind bells, donated by the Republic of China, will resonate when a breeze blows. ``Usually architects use waterfalls to mask the traffic noise,'' Coburn said. ``I wanted to create a situation where the traffic would become a background to my composition.''

In addition to the pure aesthetics of sound and the marvel of seasonal rhythms, Coburn's bell project also represents a cultural handshake, an anticipation of the growing economic friendship between Portland and its potential Pacific Rim trading partners.

Host Analog

Just outside the Oregon Convention Center's main entrance is Host Analog, a very large and very obscure public artwork. Unless you read the rather small signs around it, you may not even realize what it is. Here's the Smithsonian art inventory description:

 

Artist:	Simpson, Buster, 1942- , sculptor.
Title:	Host Analog, (sculpture).
Dates:	1991.
Medium:	Sculpture: metal and fir; Base: red rock and brick.
Dimensions:	Sculpture: approx. H. 11 ft. x W. 6 ft. x L. 70 ft.; Base: approx. H. 2 1/2 ft. x W. 35 ft. x L. 110 ft.
Inscription:	(Three plaques located at 30 ft. intervals discuss the Portland Water Works Project and general and scientific information concerning the art work) unsigned
Description:	A nurse log is segmented and arranged like a fallen classical column. Indigenous seeds and seedlings are planted in each of the segments. An irrigation line is incorporated into the work to keep the log moist and fertile for new growth.

I'm partial to conceptual work like this, and there really isn't much of it in Portland outside of gallery shows (unless maybe it's even more subtle than Host Analog and I haven't noticed it yet). The artist's website has a more detailed explanation of what's going on here:

Host Analog teaches us to see the beauty found in the order of chaos dynamics. Transposing phenomena into aesthetics, this sculpture creates an anomaly with new paradigms. This old growth nursing log, decomposing and nursing a new landscape, is a work in progress. For over 500 years, this Douglas Fir was nurtured in the same watershed which sustains Portland today. In the 1960s, this monarch fell to the winds and later bucked to determine if suitable for lumber. Not harvestable, the eight sections of the old growth trunk, measuring eight feet in diameter by eight feet long each, lay host in what became the Bull Run watershed. Rediscovered by the artist in 1990, the nursing log was moved to rest adjacent to the Oregon State Convention Center to continue its regenerative processes. Over the past nine years, the Host Analog has re-established itself in this new context, nursing both its original indigenous plants, as well as a new "invasive" plantscape from the adjacent urban landscape.

A "volunteer" Pin Oak now grows adjacent a Douglas Fir seedling, the willow, and birch roots between Western Red Cedar and Hemlock. Oregon Grape, salal, and other native ground cover commingle with imported groundcover, some perhaps hitching a ride at some time on the transcontinental railroad to Portland. During the ten years of this sculpture's nursing, the vegetation on and adjacent the sculpture has been un-hampered by human intervention. The sculpture has been prolific and informative as we become the observer of the juxtaposed phenomena, and the accommodation and expansion has taken place.

A 2011 Shockwrite article "Art in Public: Buster Simpson’s Philosophy" includes a mention of Host Analog:

It does not look like a typical public work of art, except for the signage included around it. If a viewer takes the time, they can read about many different elements relating to this idea. Simpson took this naturally felled log from a nearby forest, brought it to the city center (outside of the city’s Convention Center), to juxtapose the time it takes to cut down a tree to the time it takes to grow a forest. He included images of his daughter growing up over the years next to the tree, along with pictures of ancient Greek ruins that mirror the falling of a great column to the falling of a great tree, and images of loggers that eat from a great log table in a forest. In this seemingly simple design, Simpson incorporates art as idea and art as process for the viewer. He is able to entice both the art aficionado who revels in artistic complexity and the art novice who perhaps though contemporary art was only paint splattered on canvas.

A few other assorted items

• A 2009 Landscape Urbanism post discusses Host Analog and includes a bunch of photos.
• Someone's doctoral thesis about Simpson's work
• Number 16 on an "18 Strangest Gardens" listicle on Popular Mechanics.

Sapporo Friendship Bell

Here are a few photos of the Sapporo Friendship Bell in front of the Oregon Convention Center. The bell marks the longstanding sister city relationship between Portland and Sapporo (the big city on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, host city for the 1972 Winter Olympics, and namesake of a beer you may have heard of). There's a second bell that marks the sister city relationship between Portland and Ulsan, South Korea. I didn't realize the two bells had different origins at the time, so right now I only have photos of the Sapporo bell and I guess I'll need to go back for the other one at some point. Although I may hold off on that until my Drafts folder is a bit smaller.

The two bells were the focus of a brief controversy in 1990, when a local evangelical Christian group objected on First Amendment grounds, claiming the bells were a Buddhist religious symbol and should either be removed, or joined by a nativity scene. Convention center management didn't buy the argument; the bells stayed, and there's still no nativity scene. The ACLU was reported to be "looking at the case" but they don't seem to have ever filed suit over it. I can only imagine how Bill O'Reilly would have demagogued this if Fox News had existed back in 1990.

Oregon Convention Center Plaza

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Today's adventure takes us to the Oregon Convention Center Plaza, the new park across the street from the convention center itself. This block is owned by the Portland Development Commission, and was originally slated to be a large "headquarters" hotel attached to the convention center. Which we're told we need because all the other competing convention centers have one. I have very little insight into the convention industry, so this may actually be true as far as I know. In any case, the project was killed a few years ago, by the price tag, entrenched local hotel interests, and general public skepticism about the project. So instead they built this outdoor event space, to be used mostly in connection with conventions across the street. An sales brochure for the plaza notes it has adjustable lighting, lots of electrical outlets and water hookups, and other features an ordinary public plaza (like, say, Pioneer Courthouse Square) wouldn't offer.

A key thing to note here is that the Powers That Be haven't completely given up on building a hotel here. Since the plaza may yet turn out to be temporary (like the PDC's Block 47 a few blocks north of here), they appear to have built it on a tight budget, resulting in a fairly generic and cheap-looking space. If you're holding an outdoor convention-style event, I suppose it's actually an upside when your space is sort of a blank slate and you don't have fountains and statues and big trees and so forth to work around. This summer the plaza's also going to host "Plaza Palooza", a free summer concert series. It seems like it would also be ideal for hosting a farmer's market or a food cart pod, though I'm not sure enough people live or work in the vicinity to make either one economically viable here.

When I walked through, though, there were no events going on, and I have to say the plaza doesn't work so well as a general-purpose public park. I realize that's completely missing the point of the place, but it's going to be event-less like this the vast majority of the time, so I think it's fair to comment on it. The design doesn't invite people to walk through, or to linger. There's no signage letting people know it's a park, and then there's nowhere to sit, and if I recall correctly there aren't even any trash bins. No art, no fountains, not much in the way of flowers. It wasn't long at all before I ran out of things to take photos of, and I wandered off to find a more interesting subject. Maybe they just don't want the public to get too attached to the place. I dunno.

The Dream

So this is the long-promised post about the very worst statue in Portland. Which, it pains me to say, is "The Dream", the MLK-n-Friends grouping in front of the Oregon Convention Center. It pains be because it's a great example of noble intentions -- or at least noble platitudes -- gone terribly awry.



There's a plaque on the base explaining these intentions in excruciating length, which is never a good sign in itself. The idea is that everyone shares the same dream of justice, equality, peace, etc., and we're all striding together as one towards the glorious future, or something along those lines. Sure would be kinda neat if the world worked that way in real life, huh?

As an aside, The Dream bears more than a passing resemblance to old Soviet propaganda statues, which often depicted assorted proletarian types (usually a worker, a peasant, a soldier, an apparatchik from the Party, sometimes some token ethnic minorities, occasionally a scientist/engineer) striding together as one toward the glorious Communist future. I'm not trying to draw a moral equivalency here; I'm merely pointing out that the form is strikingly similar.



So anyway, there's MLK for starters, stiffly and clumsily strolling into the future, and looking more like Sherman Hemsley's character on The Jeffersons than MLK.







Surrounding him is a diverse grouping of figures. On his right stands what the plaque describes as "a young man of the working class", at the precise moment he achieves class consciousness (although I don't think the plaque uses that term), rolls up his sleeves, and joins the aforementioned universal struggle. In the US his sort of thing is exceedingly rare, and you're far more likely to spot our blue-collared chum here shrieking incoherently at a corporate-sponsored Palin rally than lifting a finger to advance what you'd think would be his personal economic interests. This has caused decades of hand-wringing and head-scratching in academia, and endless indie documentaries and such, and we're not going to figure it out today.



Behind MLK and facing away is a vaguely Hispanic-looking woman who symbolizes immigrants. She's looking around nervously, as if watching out for the Border Patrol, and water laps at her feet. I'm not too sure about this tableau here. It certainly looks like we're watching her sneak across the Rio Grande. Now, I was under the impression that was kind of a negative stereotype. And in any case, if you're trying for a sympathetic depiction of immigration -- beyond preaching to the choir, I mean -- this probably isn't the image you really want to emphasize. Just sayin'.



There's one detail here that I suppose is to point out that this is merely the allegorical Rio Grande: If you look closely, you'll note a couple of salmon. You didn't really think it'd be bad art in Portland without any salmon, did you?



And finally there's a kid pestering MLK. The plaque goes on for a bit about the allegorical meaning of the kid, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Something about letting go of other attachments and going off to join the aforementioned glorious struggle, but I still don't get what the sculptor is trying to say here. It's as if the kid is here as an obstacle, rather than as a co-striver. It's all very incoherent, even for someone like me who generally views kids as antagonists. And besides, all statues of kids are creepy -- even the most technically skilled statue ever made of a kid still looks like Chucky. And all painted statues I've ever seen are automatically Bad Art.



But wait, there's more! The fun doesn't stop with the statues. Look closely at the base of the thing: There's the plaque with the explanatory essay on it, and two more honoring people who apparently didn't make the cut for the main statue, or were added later to bump the diversity up another notch. That's the problem when you try to depict universal struggles: There's always someone else to include. So here we have one panel honoring Gandhi, and the other honoring Chief Joseph.



At least I think the Gandhi one is supposed to be in his honor. It's the weirdest part of the whole sculpture, and I'm giving it the unofficial title of "Legalize It". So you've got Gandhi arguing with a lion, and there's a big scary mushroom cloud, and what looks like Indian and Pakistani guys arguing, and even a set of hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys.



Chief Joseph is a bit more sedate, mostly just scenery. More salmon though.

Despite the two panels here, you can tell this dates from the early days of trying to include absolutely everyone. If you made something like this thing today -- not that I'm suggesting it -- you'd need more panels. You'd need a Harvey Milk at minimum, and someone in a wheelchair looking saintly; and others for the transgendered, little people, a fat activist, and probably others that don't spring immediately to mind. This will offend conservative types, and you may end up having to add a Bull Connor statue facing them all down, in order to be "fair and balanced".



That's not the only way you could extend the thing, though. Our heroes are basically already arrayed in a defensive circle; why not have them fighting off an army of horribly mutated, inbred, redneck zombies? Ok, so the whole peace-n-love angle wouldn't work anymore, but you'd be adding the sort of awesomeness this thing desperately needs. And just think -- right now nobody makes a trip just to see the statue, and conventioneers likely barely notice the thing. But add some zombies and give MLK a chainsaw, and that all changes. Hipsters would show up by the busload from far and wide, their Holgas and Polaroids at the ready, many of them earnestly making indie documentaries about each other, or writing ironic hipster songs about the whole occasion. And I'd start a bar next door and overcharge them for PBR. So, yeah, the zombies would be in rather poor taste, but it might do wonders for the local economy.



Items about "The Dream" from across the interwebs:

• The artist's website has a page about it. His bio elsewhere on the site shows him wearing tie-dye. This would probably be a bad time to fall back on stereotypes about dreamy hippies and such, so I'm just going to say it's a telling detail.
• The Convention Center's Art Map has a blurb about it, and the other artworks scattered around the complex.
• Portland Public Art covers another work by the same artist, an obscure Lewis & Clark scene hidden behind some shrubs at the University of Portland.
• Washington Post story about DC's new MLK statue, which is much larger and (to some critics) rather "confrontational", a term Dan Savage decodes as meaning "uppity".
• Another article about MLK and the DC statue.

Spring Beer & Wine Festival 2007

On Saturday, we dropped by the Spring Beer & Wine Festival over at the Convention Center. This has always been one of my favorite beery events; it's indoors, it's always held the weekend of Easter, the selection's usually pretty good, and you're more likely to encounter the actual brewers than at most events of this kind. Beerwise, this year wasn't the best SBWF ever, but we had a good time as always.



Some impressions:

• A lot of breweries brought their usual fare you can find at the grocery store. Which is not why we go to these things. We generally tried to avoid beers we could get elsewhere, even beers we otherwise enjoy.
  
  
• I didn't do any detailed tasting notes this time around. I had the Blackberry along and everything, but it just sort of felt like that would take me beyond mere dork territory into full-bore twitdom. Yes, do I realize I've done precisely that at least once before. But maybe I'm starting to develop social skills or something. I'm not sure.
  
  
• I'm kind of surprised the local beerblogosphere (and there's got to be a better word than that ) hasn't had much to say about it. So far I've run across just two mentions of the festival, and the first is by someone who wasn't able to go.
  
  
• My overall favorite of the festival was the Bitter Bitch IPA (128 IBU, 9% ABV), from Astoria Brewing out in (you guessed it) Astoria. Mmmmm.... I was far from alone in this. I got there early and tried it before the huge line formed. Later when we walked by, the line was starting to interfere with the cooking demo stage. If you were stuck in that line, don't blame me. I told nobody. Ok, I let my wife try it. And I ran across a couple of coworkers late in the day and I told them, but the line was already in full swing at that point. The line was someone else's fault, basically is what I'm getting at here.
  
  
• I always run into coworkers at these things. I can never decide whether that's a good thing or not.
  
  
• The one line we did get stuck in was the line to get in. Seems that word got out about free admission before 2pm. So we were in line for maybe 10 minutes, and right behind us there were a couple of guys who were there to party. One spent most of the wait telling the other all about the totally awesome lap dance he had the other night. Guys: This sort of thing falls firmly into the Too Much Sharing Department. Thanks.
  
  
• While I'm your classic Northwest IPA dork, my wife's more of a red fan. Hairsplitting arguments about whether "red" is a legitimate beer style would be unwelcome in her presence. Her favorite was Red Zone, from Hazel Dell Brewing up in the 'Couve. Full Sail's seasonal red was a close second. She's usually not a big Full Sail fan, so this was kind of a surprise. She didn't like the red from Pelican quite so much, which was even more of a surprise.
  
  
• We both liked the imperial brown from Walking Man, which they brewed up specially for the festival, bless their beery little hearts. They always give their beers funny names that have something to do with walking, or feet, stuff like that. So they named the brown "Foot Fetish". (giggle) Which still isn't quite as funny as the "Streetwalker Malt Liquor" they did a while back.
  
  
• On a lark, I tried the Huckleberry-n-Honey beer from Lang Creek, a small Montana brewery I'd never heard of before. Way better than I expected. Even my wife liked it, and she usually considers fruit in beer an abomination.
  
  
• One nice thing is that although kids were allowed before 7pm this year, there weren't very many of 'em. Mostly babies in strollers, and that I can understand. If you have a baby in a stroller, you probably need a beer. Why else would they make strollers with cupholders? It all makes perfect sense, really.
  
  
• Lompoc's EZ Taxation ale was really tasty as well. Which reminds me of something important I still need to attend to.... Hey, there's still a few days left, what's the big rush?
  
  
• I was puzzled at first by how many people were walking around munching on bags of Beer Chips, when there was real food to be had just steps away. Then I saw the booth, which was run by a couple of bubbly young women in extremely tight tops. We men really are the simplest of creatures, aren't we?
  
  
• The food's never exactly gourmet at these things. But there were ribs to be had, therefore I was a happy camper. Please note previous comment about being among the simplest of creatures.