The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and
construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations that have the
added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture
will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid
with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to
thousands of homes.

Land Art is an art movement in which landscape and the work of art are
inextricably linked. Works of Land Art are sometimes created with only
the natural materials of the surroundings. In this case, we are asking
interdisciplinary artist teams to use technology as the medium for art
in a way that is sympathetic to and inspired by the natural
surroundings.

Art has the proven ability to create movements and stimulate creative
dialogue. The artist community has long taken a critical approach to
the problems of energy use and production, which has helped to open
the public eye to the severity of the problems facing us. The time is
now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the
problem through their own work: “solution-based art practice”.

As we move towards our renewable energy future we should recognize the
inherent differences that exist between the old and the new means of
energy production and the change to built manifestations that
consequently follow from this shift. When power generation facilities
were adapted for the urban environment in previous eras, they
necessarily responded to the aesthetic considerations of the time
required of them to integrate with the fabric of the community. As the
days of the gas or coal fired power plant at the farthest outskirts of
the city come to a close, we will find more and more integration of
energy production within the fabric of our commercial and residential
communities. The need for large scale exurban generation will always
be there, but it will be augmented more and more by urban and rural
micro-generation and mid-scale generation.

We live in a world that cross-culturally puts a high emphasis on
design. As energy generation necessarily comes in closer proximity
with the real estate that it powers, issues of aesthetics that drive
acceptance are becoming more and more debated. A holistic approach to
a renewable energy infrastructure has a place for both macro and
micro-generation.

Macro installations in the landscape should also take care in their
design to integrate with their surroundings both visually and
environmentally. Micro installations should take care in their designs
to integrate with the fabric of the urban community. Just as buildings
and public art and land art exist as interventions in the fabric of
the environment, so must power generation constructions from our green
fields to our suburbs to our downtowns react responsibly to their role
as permanent additions to our shared experience.

We have, on the one hand, an ever increasing drive toward buildings
and cities that are being designed to run on 100% renewable energy.
The design community and city planners are moving in this direction
driven by the collective will of society. On the other hand, we have
technologies proliferating that are still rather utilitarian in their
form such as the standard horizontal axis, three blade wind turbine.
And these utilitarian forms are seeing some pushback from individual
communities, especially as they come closer and closer to the city.
The first warning signs of this are seen in rural mountaintop
residential communities and coastal communities but this debate will
only get more and more heated as the devices integrate into more dense
urban environments.

What is needed in order to bridge the gap (between the larger desire
for a renewable future and the community level negative reactions to
the application of the systems required for it) is an artistic
movement that can set a course towards aesthetic considerations in
sustainable infrastructure. Because, after all, sustainability in
communities is not only about resources, but it is also about harmony.

The Land Art Generator Initiative will bring together the sciences and
the arts in a commitment to the future by making aesthetic power
plants that inspire the world through their conceptual beauty and
their renewable nature.

The LAGI viewing platforms will be tourist destinations that will draw
people from around the world to experience the beauty of the
collaborative art creations. The LAGI sites will eventually return
financially on the investment that is made in their production as they
continue to produce clean energy that will be used by consumers both
private and public for decades into the future.

The 2010 LAGI International design competition is now open and teams
are registering. The deadline for submission is June 4, 2010.

http://www.landartgenerator.org/project.html