Robert Youds, Public Art Proposal, Burrard Place, Vancouver, BC

Robert Youds • Public Art Concept Proposal

BURRARD PLACE

Vancouver, BC

Our moon and your daily biosphere Five sites towards an integrated experience My work as an artist is embedded in the questioning of consciousness and its relationship to our urban lives—how we demarcate the everyday while still anticipating/imagining the future.

In my practice I achieve this condition by creating sensorial experiences involving a heightened interface with close looking and thinking. The idea is to create a temporary autonomous zone—a situation that causes us to take a momentary break from daily routines while catching up with ourselves through the act of a unique perceptual observation. My constructed works also ask us to stop and witness ourselves in relationship to the idea of nature. In the natural realm we often find temporary solace in the awe of a waterfall, a sunset, a forest, etc. In the manufactured landscape of urbanism the phenomenological can sometimes seem to be more distanced but nevertheless still obtainable through our noting of the changing weather patterns, or perhaps witnessing a moon phase.

The moon in particular seems to hold this most primal spectatorial power over us. Whether a small child, teen, or adult, there still remains a special momentary registry when catching the presence of the moon in the night sky. We stop in our tracks in wonder. This large glowing disc of light and shadow in the heavenly sky that we understand and simultaneously don’t understand, plays a huge role in shaping our fragile humanness. Human feelings stimulated by the observation of the moon have long been recorded throughout time in a wide variety of popular forms. Some of these forms include book titles and musical lyrics.

Site One Entrance to the Mews, Daylight

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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History and context of the project

How my proposal works

Vancouver, the city of neon light, drawing its designation from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s dominance of commercial neon signage. At one time Vancouver reportedly had the largest accumulation of neon in North America next to Las Vegas. But in later years neon radiance began to lose its once near omnipresent aesthetic appreciation and the signs began to recede from the city’s horizon. Only in very recent times through the influence of the 1970s international artistic developments in light and space did it start to make a minor return into public/artistic usage. I have been using it on and off in my own creative projects since the mid-90s. I have always marveled at its wavelength properties—seemingly endlessly spreading outwards in its informational charge. My proposal is a nod to the earlier illuminated sign history of Vancouver, a more overtly celebrated romantic/future and one I knew so well growing up here in the sixties.

I am proposing to make a complete work of art by integrating the five sites under the common thread of our relationship to the moon, space, and time. This will involve a carefully considered capture of time within a dynamic environment—how the viewer both moves through and inhabits space and time in different ways over the course of a day. In this way I am suggesting there are multiple forms of experiencing time and each of the sites are designed to acknowledge this.

My proposal carries with it this once acknowledged anticipation of a present/future through the express underscoring of our collective roles in finding a balanced and sustainable relationship to our urban/nature paradigm. My five site response proposes one cohesive and contemplative imaginative environment for living.

Site One: Entrance to the Mews Site One acts as an alluring beacon from the immediate street view. The monumental glass cylinder and inner sphere will have water cascading down the outside of the structure in alternating cycles between a course spray and gentle flow. Throughout the day the viewer looking through the veil of water will experience an enigmatic mysteriously obscured atmospheric moon. And by night, the same seemingly orbited sphere will be lit by a programmed lighting system simulating the phases of the moon in a repeating six minute cycle. There will also be an additional lighting effect that will illuminate the cascading water, creating a coloured curtain backdrop to correspond to the moon phases. A quieting, natural sounding respite from the busy urban drone.

Site Two: Mews Wall Site Two is a processional space. People transition through on bike or foot, to or from their destinations. By day the neon overhead pods will gently provide a shadowed canopy from the suns rays, while adding to a vibrant visual sightline through the Mews. By night the neon letters on the underside of each of the pods will become even more animated as their ringed and moving texts representing song titles expand outwards like droplets of energy and light. Stop awhile and remember a musical composition.

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site Three: Underside of the Breezeway Site Three is a close-up image of the surface of the moon, the surface we cannot see by the naked eye alone. But we do understand its geometry as defined by light and shadow.

Like the facade of a building—the lights of its inhabitants allowing us to witness what is simultaneously visible and invisible. The moon’s image literally draws us imaginatively into itself. This building along with its moon porte cochere beckons us to consider a future time.

Sites Four & Five: Entrance to the Office Podium and Entrance to Tower A Sites Four and Five are entry and exit points into the tower. These portals are the threshold of time—each passage marking out change, direction, outcome and even desire. These transitory moments, separating our indoors from outdoors, will be celebrated by two separate neon illuminated sign-boards each carrying up to 25 different book titles which include the word moon in their narrative description. A playful/poetic even romantic tribute to the humanist measure of a day lived.

Site One Entrance to the Mews, Daylight

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site One Entrance to the Mews, Night BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site One Entrance to the Mews, Night BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

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Site Two Mews Wall, Daylight

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site Two Mews Wall, Night

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site Three Under the Breezeway

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

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Sites Three & Four Under the Beezeway

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

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Site Four Entrance to Office Podium

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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Site Five Entrance to Tower A

BURRARD PLACE VANCOUVER, BC 2018

ROBERT YOUDS

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