Janet Echelman in Shanghai
Council member Janet Echelman’s “1.26” sculpture is a monumental, floating form that pulses with the changing wind and weather and invites you to pause and contemplate a physical manifestation of interconnectedness of opposites – soft with hard, earth with sky, things we control with the forces beyond us.
The concept of the artwork stems from scientific data sets of the 2010 Chilean earthquake and tsunami, and the notion that we are all connected between the earth’s natural systems. Studio Echelman generated the 3D form for the sculpture using NASA and NOAA data that measured the effects of the earthquake including tsunami wave heights across the oceanic expanse. The resulting vibrations momentarily sped up the earth’s rotation, shortening the length of the day by 1.26 micro-seconds, which became the catalyst for the 1.26 sculpture.
