1.26

This artwork engages with issues of temporality and interconnectedness surrounding the 1.26-microsecond shortening of the day that resulted from the February 2010 Chile earthquake’s redistribution of the earth’s mass. Echelman constructed a large netted aerial sculpture—inspired by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) simulation of the earthquake’s ensuing tsunami—that floated high above the traffic of downtown Denver, suspended between CivicCenter’s Greek Amphitheatre and the DenverArt Museum.  The art was designed to move dynamically, choreographed by the wind.  At night, a looped program of colored light illuminated the sculpture, an interpretation of sunrise-to-sunset colorimeter readings of days in Santiago and Denver.  

Janet Echelman’s installation was the City of Denver’s signature commission to celebrate the re-awakening of Civic Center Park and to mark the inaugural Biennial of the Americas.

The artwork translated two epiphenomena of the Chilean earthquake—its impacts on the day's length and the ocean's surface—into a dynamic visual form to underscore the interdependence of earth systems and the global community as revealed by natural disasters. 

In the course of researching 1.26, Echelman consulted with scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NOAACenter for Tsunami Research to obtain data in order to create the first three-dimensional model of the tsunami.  Using her proprietary net-building software, the artist transformed an outline of the tsunami’s higher amplitude area into a netted sculptural form, which is being woven with Spectra® fiber, one of the world's strongest and lightest man-made fibers. The sculpture’s lightweight structure is optimized for taking the form of wind patterns, and is engineered to withstand gusts up to 90 mph.  This was accomplished using original software that calculates the sum of wind loads on each of the quarter-million knots and half-million yarn lengths as the net deflects in the wind.