Story and Photo by Arlette Valdivia, Staff Writer
This article was updated on March 17th 7:51 PM
The Cypress College Art Gallery (CCAG) had its grand opening for its new gallery “An Earth Twin at the Digital Dawn” on March 6 from 6-8 p.m. The gallery will be displayed from March 6 to April 18.
The “An Earth Twin at The Digital Dawn” art gallery was curated by Janet Owen Driggs, Director of the CCAG, and designed by Lara Hoas and Andrew Byrom.
The gallery was also showcased at the 18th St. Art Center as part of the Art & Science Collide and Digital New Arts Festival Santa Monica.
The art gallery was designed to spotlight the work of the artist Tom Van Sant. According to Driggs, she had never heard of Van Sant until Jan Williamson, executive director of the 18th St. Arts Center, asked if she was interested in curating an exhibition about Van Sant.
After researching Van Sant, Driggs found that his work on public art–made out of concrete, technology, and its relationship with art, environment history, and environmental actions–inspired her to say yes to Willamson.
“I had a year’s sabbatical to focus on this research because no art historian has ever really written about him before. They are just not interested, which puzzles me because he’s fascinating. I just think he’s very challenging for art historians because he doesn’t fit into a neat little box,” said Driggs.
Van Sant envisioned that a live earth model could help educate others on the environment and make them fall in love with the planet. His model projected information about the planet on a globe in real-time, coming from satellites. This project was named the Geosphere Project and was started in 1988.
The Geosphere Project was started before technology could create Van Sant’s vision. He collaborated with corporations, agencies, scientists, and politicians to bring this vision to life. According to the CCAG, Van Sant’s project was displayed on five continents and fundamentally influenced U.S. policy. It demonstrated a post-Cold War environment for military technology. It generated the world’s most reproduced images of Earth as it looks from space but without the clouds that paved the way for Google Earth.
Van Sant and scientist-collaborator Dr. L Van Warren developed a tool called Painter Reveal to be able to remove layers on an image. Driggs stated that this was done before Photoshop and the artists weren’t interested in commercializing, they were only interested in making.
Van Sant had various studio assistants, and two of them were interested in marketing this data.
These two people stole the data and sold the data to a company called KeyWhole which eventually became Google Earth.
Driggs’ goal for the exhibition was for people to learn about artists who brought different elements together, such as how Van Sant did as an artist and scientist.
She stated that her message with the “An Earth Twin at the Digital Dawn” art gallery was for viewers to ask themselves, “What does your future planet look like?” Driggs believes it is important for each of us to bring about change on the ground.
To learn more about the CCAG and experience the exhibit, visit the Cypress College Art Department’s website or visit the gallery in person Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
