This Place is Not a Place of Honor
2007
The Yucca Mountain Waste Isolation Project Plant is built to withstand and secure radioactive waste for ten thousand years, long enough for its toxicity to degrade to safe levels. Design documentation for the project consider how to develop marker systems to denote the place's danger even after any potential end to civilization. With so much on the line, what if the message degraded or the system failed?
The installation consists of 4 translucent screens, inspired by a proposed floor plan for the WIPP, irregularly torn and ripped, with video projections screened simultaneously from each side. From the front, the projection is a selection of material from the WIPP design specification, including proposed solutions from the design team. From the back, the projection is of amorphous, Cerenkov blue clouds and atomic cloud chamber experiments. Over the 5 minute course of the the video loops, the background loop becomes brighter and brighter, penetrating the holes in the screens and eventually overwhelming the data projection.
With Gian Pablo Villamil
