“Desert Breath” - The Cones Of Egypt

By: Annalee Newitz  Via: Unique Daily

Thesestrange cones and holes look like a bizarre wind formation in theEgyptian desert, until you see the pattern they make from the air.

Created by Greek artist Danae Stratouand the DAST art team in the mid-1990s, this earthwork art is called“Desert Breath.” It covers 100,000 square meters in the Egyptian desertnear the Red Sea, and took several years to create. At its center was afairly deep pool of water, and the whole project was designed to slowlyerode over time. Which is exactly what’s happened

This is a view of the project via a satellite photo taken shortly after it was created.

And this is what it looks like today. It is eroding beautifully.

Via: Virtual Globetrotting
Theproject is the brainchild of three young, intrepid Greek artists knowncollectively as the D.A.S.T. Art Team: sculptor Danae Stratou; hersister Alexandra, an industrial designer; and architect StellaConstandinidis. The installation, which has taken months of hard workin extreme heat and scathing winds, was scheduled to be inaugurated onNovember 30. But a late-autumn reminder of the desert’s cruel beauty,in the form of fierce rains, pushed back the completion date to earlyJanuary 1997.

“DesertBreath” is a thoughtful work of great beauty and ambition. Carved intoa flat expanse of sand in El Gouna, bordering the Red Sea on theSahara’s eastern tip, it occupies 25 acres. The installation consistsof two interlocking logarithmic spirals, which fan out from a commoncenter in the same direction of rotation. One spiral is comprised ofprotruding cones, the other of incised cones dug into the sand.

Thesize of each of the 178 cones is relative to its distance from thecenter: The first cone, at the spiral’s entrance, is 3.75-meters highand 15 meters in diameter; the subsequent cones gradually diminish insize as the viewer follows them into the center-thus creating animpression of infinite inward and outward motion. At the center is a30-meter-wide conical vessel that is sunk into the ground and filled tothe brim with water; in fact, it is an incised cone, within which is aprotruding cone whose cut-off tip rests at water level, suggesting asmall island, a place of birth and rebirth, generation and regeneration.

“Our goal is to create a reality that can be experienced through time and become part of one’s physical memory,”Danae Stratou explains. The choice of materials and forms adhered tothe desert’s innate rhythms. The shifting, conical sand dunes, formedby gusts of wind, led to the selection of the geometric cone as thework’s predominant form. Sand, of course, became the primary material.Small mirrors placed at the tip of each cone form an optical illusion-amirage, in the language of the desert-of water.

What won’t be a mirage is the slow decomposition of the installation, which will be completely erased by the winds

For more information, and more photos, check out Stratou’s gallery.

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Blessings

Dan Benor, MD