|
Creative Tree Bound Installations |
|
Sculptor Keith Jennings carves wise faces into trees, revealing each wooden tower's inner spirit. Jennings first embarked on his Tree Spirits project back in 1982 when he decided to creatively manipulate a tree in his backyard with a few hand tools. Starting out as a way to kill time on a budget, the artist wound up honing his craft. Jennings was later commissioned to apply his wood sculpting skills on a series of trees throughout St. Simons Island, located right off the coast of the state of Georgia.
Jennings took two to four days to sculpt each serene face throughout the forest, allowing them to intriguingly blend into their surroundings. (Of course, once they're spotted, it's hard not to notice their faces.) Each sculptural portrait emerges from its wooden post like a haunting sage, ready to impart some knowledge. The artist says that each face he carves into the wood is created entirely according to the tree. He insists, "I don’t have that much to do with it. The wood speaks to you, ya know?”
Jennings' Tree Spirits project is on display throughout St. Simons Island (along private and public property) and the artist has conveniently tracked each one on Google Map.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Enigmatic Moray Agricultural Terraces Of Incas |
|
One of the most visually stunning Inca ruins is at Moray, an archaeological
site in Peru approximately 50 km northwest of Cuzco and just west of the village
of Maras. In a large bowl-like depression, is constructed a series of concentric
terraces that looks like an ancient Greek amphitheater. The largest of these
terraces are at the center – they are enormous in size, and descend to a depth
of approximately 150 meter, leading to a circular bottom so well drained that it
never completely floods, no matter how plentiful the rain.
The concentric terraces are split by multiple staircases that extend upward like
spokes of a wheel and enable people to walk from the top to the bottom of the
bowl. Six more terraces, in connected ellipses rather than perfect circles,
surround the concentric heart of Moray, and eight terraced steps that cover only
a fraction of the perimeter overlook the site. The purpose of these depressions
is uncertain, but the most widely agreed theory is they used to serve as
‘agricultural research station’.
One of the most remarkable feature of the site is the vast difference in
temperature that exist between the top and the bottom reaches of the structure,
which can be as much as 15°C. This large temperature difference created micro
climates, similar to what is achieved in greenhouses in modern times, that was
possibly used by the Inca to study the effects of different climatic conditions
on crops.
It is no coincidence that the temperature difference corresponds to the natural
difference between coastal sea level farmland and Andean farming terraces 1,000
meters about sea level. Furthermore, pollen studies indicate that soils from
different regions of the Inca empire was imported to each of the large circular
terraces. It is now believed that the Moray terraces were used by Incan
priest-scientists to experiment with vegetable crops to determine which should
be disseminated for domestic production to farmers with fields all over the
Andean region.
Another enigma is the way how drainage for water flowing through the aqueducts
worked. The lowest level is perfectly drained and never gets flooded even after
incessant rains. It is suggested that there must be underground channels built
by the depressions' bottom allowing water to drain. It is also argued that the
bottom is over a very porous natural rock formation that enables water filtering
toward the earth's interior.
We might never know why Moray was constructed, but the agricultural research
station is a very likely possibility. Perhaps it is not surprising, since about
60 percent of the world’s food crops originated in the Andes, including hundreds
of varieties of maize and thousands of potato varieties.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
|
| Results 15 - 21 of 5168 |
Pictures