Two Things Time Forgets in One Place

Post date: Jul 19, 2014 10:59:41 PM

In Celebration of Surveying and Street Art

There are two things which time forgets that have remained up front and center to my work for over 10 years. The first is the importance of professional land surveyors to society and surveying history to modern day surveyors. You can see my passion for public awareness in my Land Surveyors United project. The second thing that is forgotten by time is street art in urban environments. You may not be able to believe that such a place could exist where the two have ever been intermingled, but you'd be wrong. To the right is an ironic photograph of a piece of street art that I shot on my last visit to Brooklyn, NY. This is an interesting piece of street art in Brooklyn, NY featuring what looks to be a surveyors level rod, slightly altered to look like a vertical eye exam. I found this work to be incredibly relevant to the situation current and future land surveyors face. The surveying world itself at times fails to recognize the importance of remembering their own history. Many times, I have considered writing a paper explaining the various reasons for why both the public and the professional have forgotten the importance of surveyors to society.

In the following interactive web experiment, I have mashedup an imaginary art gallery, with walls lined with surveying history books and antiquated surveying equipment and tools. Clicking the foot prints on the floor will take you on a short journey where you will get a chance to see evidence of some magnificent street art images that I have captured during my years of living in New York City. As I attempt to preserve these historical artifacts, I hope to always be able to convert my findings into something that others who are interested might be able to enjoy. There are so many philosophical ties between the two, aside from the obvious land ownership aspect to the discussion. I hope we can be more mindful of what we are destroying for the future, but unfortunately this may never be the case.