Triforium, a sixty-foot high, sixty-ton concrete sculpture, mounted with Venetian glass prisms, light bulbs, and an internal carillon, at the Los Angeles Mall Civic Center complex, was a mistake. The mall's architect, Robert Stockwell, commissioned artist Joseph Young to create the sculpture, and it was installed in 1975. Young's original plans called for a kinetic sculpture, which would use motion sensors and a computer controlled system to detect and translate the motions of passersby into...
more »Triforium, a sixty-foot high, sixty-ton concrete sculpture, mounted with Venetian glass prisms, light bulbs, and an internal carillon, at the Los Angeles Mall Civic Center complex, was a mistake. The mall's architect, Robert Stockwell, commissioned artist Joseph Young to create the sculpture, and it was installed in 1975. Young's original plans called for a kinetic sculpture, which would use motion sensors and a computer controlled system to detect and translate the motions of passersby into patterns of light and sound displayed by the Venetian glass prisms and carillon. Young predicted that his public artwork would eventually become known as "the Rosetta Stone of art and technology" – and it didn't work very well. And people hated it. They called it the Psychedelic Nickelodeon and Three Wishbones in Search of a Turkey, but it was too expensive to fix and too expensive to tear down. It just sat there for years. And it's still there, along with that totem pole and that pagoda. That's Los Angeles. ~ Monday, March 11, 2019
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