Event - Coachella

The Coachella Valley music and Arts festival is one of the most awaited events of the year in Southern California. Popular artists from a variety of genres including rock, electronic dance music, hip hop, indie etc. perform in the desert in the California desert in a spectacle that is a true oasis for music fans. In addition to the performances the entire valley has several modern art sculptures and installations that truly are a wonder.

The festival is truly a reflection of modern art in terms of the music, the art of performing live, and the spectacularly designed sculptures. While most artists good performers some were clearly better than others. I learned that there is so much more to performing live than getting the music right. The more experienced artists were engaging, they interacted with the crowd a lot more, the lights complimented the music very well, and most importantly they had a surprise element. Great performers often played a mix of their most popular songs that had never been played before.

The festival illustrated how science can be applied to enhance art. Light and screen displays for some performances were truly spectacular. Even the art installations were enrapturing. My favorite one was the balloon chain. It really looks like a string of stars that have gravitated around the festival. It must have been challenging to align the balloons in such a manner without any support base on the ground. Occasionally, parts of the string would be released and design would be altered. Looking at it from down under, really makes you feel like you are in paradise.

It was also really amazing to see how diverse and subjective art can be. I often heard people talk about their favorite artists, and range in selection was very interesting. Even within the same genre people just preferred different artists. When somebody in the restroom line asked me which artists I was going to see that night, he was quite surprised. His list was completely different, yet he was just as excited. 

Event - Getty Villa

Have you ever seen a scene from a movie or TV show set in a beautiful garden in ancient times? In a recent episode of the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones, the beautiful princess Myrcella is shown walking in the gardens of Dorne. A few weeks back I visited the gardens at the Getty Villa, and I truly felt that I had been transported back in time. There was splendid artwork on the pillars and walls that mimicked the rich decorations of ancient times. There were multifarious flowers and a sort of tunnel of leaves that made me feel like I was in a royal palace when I was really in a museum.

Apart from the gardens the museum also has up for display precious treasures of ancient civilizations, including a real mummy. The Mummy of Herakleides, is particularly interesting as it combines the Egyptian custom of mummification of the dead with the Roman tradition of individualized portraiture. The face of Herkleides is painted on the mummy and even after 2000 years one can see the subtle lines of shading for the contours of the face. The mummy also has painted on it the Egyptian symbols of protection and rebirth which gives a lot of insight into why Egyptians mummified important people of ancient times.

Having taken a class on Greek History, I learned about how Greek Pottery provides a valuable insight into the diverse cultures and practices of ancient Greeks, as well as Greek Mythology. The image below is that of a ritual vessel, portraying the scene from the Illiad, when Menelaus found Helen at Troy. Helen originally married to Menelaus had eloped with Paris, a prince of Troy. Menelaus had intended to kill her when he found her at Troy but he dropped his sword at the sight of her beautiful body. Standing between Menelaus and Helen is Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and the source of Helen’s erotic power. Greek mythology heavily features divine intervention in the affairs of humans and this ritual vessel is a great illustration. 

Event - 24th Annual Santa Monica Sustainability Festival

Many would consider ‘sustainable’ to be a scientific term. The 24^th Annual Santa Monica Festival held at Clover Park did a fantastic job of using art to convince people to adopt simple sustainable practices. The recent heat wave in India killed 2300 people, making it the 5^th deadliest heat wave in history. Climate change is not a myth; it is a threat to future life on earth. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do not allow heat from the sun to escape the earth’s atmosphere. While this insulation is necessary to keep the planet warm, excess carbon dioxide emissions due to burning coal and driving gasoline-powered cars, are trapping excessive heat within the earth’s atmosphere. The result is an increase in global temperatures that could cause deadly droughts and floods. As part of its Save a Ton campaign, at the festival, EcoMotion inflated a large balloon to simulate what a ton of carbon dioxide looks like. Greenhouse gases are invisible and we can see the dangerous amounts we are emitting every day. The balloon is so big that it would dwarf a large double-decker bus. Yet it is a month of emissions for the average Californian. This is an extremely innovative way to bring about awareness as physiologically, once one has a visual frame of reference it is much easier to comprehend the scale of the problem.

Another sustainable endeavor that would prevent pollution, preserve depleting natural resources and restrict the release of greenhouse gases, is using solar energy in our very homes. There were several stalls at the festival with easy and convenient solutions to use solar energy. The HERO program for example, is a very affordable way to make renewable energy upgrades to your home. It facilitates the installation of under floor insulation, small wind turbine, roof solar panels, etc. that allow households to harness renewable energy, in a manner which is sustainable and energy efficient.

In order to promote recycling, one of the stalls displayed bottle cap art. It is elaborate art work made from recycled bottle caps. While everybody knows that we should recycle plastic bottles, we often forget or don’t bother. Yet such displays of art illustrate that even seemingly useless things like used bottle caps can have value, and we should really endeavor to preserve and reuse things.