Heidi Neilson wanted to install her Moon Arrow project somewhere accessible by boat.
From the satellite photo, it looked like there were little islands all along the Newtown Creek, but when we got there I realized they might be too high to climb up,
too narrow for the base of the arrow,
or disappearing fast as the tide came in.
We passed Willis Elkins out in the creek on his bi-weekly water quality testing,
and saw by a beautiful billboard by the artist Rambo,
and finally came to a place that both of us agreed might work.
“We are in the T!” Said Heidi. She had seen this place on maps when she was working on her Long Island City Sundial.
Heidi got to work assembling the Moon Arrow, a kinetic sculpture, programmed to continually point at the moon from wherever she sets it up.
The night before, Heidi had installed the Arrow at Socrates Sculpture Park on a crowded movie night. Hundreds of people saw the piece and interacted during the event.
“This will be the opposite of last night,” I said, “maybe just for us.”
The main rotator unit of the Moon Arrow is made from a Lazy Susan, and the motor box seems to be sealed with packing tape. “Iterative prototyping” explains Heidi.
There is something 70’s-space-movie about the whole apparatus.
It seems like technology tries so hard to blend into our lives these days; personal electronics look more and more like candy bars or a baby bottle.
Heidi is sort of going in the opposite direction.
I knew what the Moon Arrow was suppose to do, but when it came to life, it was still quite astonishing. The arrow started moving around like a searchlight,
then became still when it found the moon, just below the horizon.
Many of Heidi’s projects point to something beyond our perception, profound, or planetary, to remind us of forces that govern our lives, even in the city.
It seemed appropriate that we were also in a fluid place. Because of the tide, our surroundings were changing with the position of the moon.
In fact, they were changing pretty quickly.
If we didn’t get back out under the LIRR bridge, the tide would trap us Dutch Kills for another 6 hours.
We paddled back to Greenpoint with the Moon Arrow all packed up in its neat silver boxes.
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