Inigo Manglano-Ovalle

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.

Watch the full episode. See more ART:21.

In both of these videos by Art 21, we hear from Columbian and Spanish artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle talk about his experiences as being an immigrant to the United States. In Random Sky (2006), Manglano-Ovalle collaborates with two other artists (Mark Hereld and Rick Grebenas) in order to capture time in the form of capturing weather patterns and visualizing the patterns in different shades of blue bars on the side of the art center (Hyde Park where this installation was featured). As the viewers pass by and become literal shadows and outlines on the wall amongst the pattern, a correlation between projecting the time of the weather and the time of the interaction with the art poses an interesting concept in how we view time. The nature of our world today has become technologized so much so that we can literally visualize the patterns of nature.

Also, in his other sculptures he created a metal sculpture that was an image taken from a weather image pattern machine that tracts thunderstorms and he caught the image of the cloud right before the storm hit. Although there is nothing necessarily new media in the final art project, the method behind the art piece was used with technology. Nature's patterns and creations can be literally captured through the invention of technology, and therefore opens up a creative avenue to explore this new perspective on nature within the realms of our technological world.

“Weather writes, erases, and rewrites itself upon the sky with the fluidity of language; it is with language that we have sought throughout history to apprehend it.”

—Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001

(this quote was taken from an article about Manglano-Ovalle)