ATC Lecture: Alexander Long, "Land Art for the Next 10,000 Years"
April 22, 2013, 7:30pm to 9:00pm
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley
How do you build an monument scale sculptural machine that will last as long as civilization? For the last fifteen years The Long Now Foundation and Alexander Rose have been working on building this icon of long-term thinking. Rose is currently managing the 10,000 Year Clock project underway in West Texas where they have already excavated over 500 vertical feet through solid rock to house the Clock.
Alexander will discuss the research and design process that has taken him as far as the arctic Seed Vault in Svalbard, to the ultra-secret Mormon geneological vaults in Salt Lake City. He will show the building process now underway for the 10,000 Year Clock that includes specialized excavation robots and the fabrication of the Clock itself.
As the director of Long Now, Alexander has facilitated projects such as the 10,000 Year Clock, The Rosetta Project, Long Bets, Seminars About Long Term Thinking, Long Server and others. Alexander shares several design patents on the 10,000 Year Clock with Danny Hillis, the first prototype of which is in the Science Museum of London, and the monument scale version is now under construction in West Texas. Alexander was hired in 1997 to build the 10,000 Year Clock with computer scientist Danny Hillis. Alexander has spoken at venues all over the world ranging from NASA to the TED conference. He was an artist in residence at Silicon Graphics Inc., and a founding partner of the robotics company Inertia Labs. Alexander's combat robots have won over six world championship titles appearing in the TV show BattleBots. Alexander has also built large pyrotechnic displays for the Burning Man festival and other dangerous machines. Alexander is part of the Theil Fellowship Network, and founded the Robot Fighting League. Alexander graduated with a bachelor of arts honors degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Industrial Design in 1995, as well as attended the Art Center College of Design.
The ATC series is produced by the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), with support from the Office of the Vice Chancellor and Provost, the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Meyer Sound and Theo Armour.