Exploring the social, environmental and engineering potentials of the LA River, I have undertaken a number of projects in the river channel near Fletcher Drive in Los Angeles.

In this project, collaborating with John Lilly, we made a sheet metal water wheel that was painted with an encompassing variety of words that describe water. While the wheel animated text it also provided the power to pump water up out of the river where it was gathered in a tank and then released to a reverse osmosis filtration and "bottling station" near the banks of the river.

A second work in process, involves creating power for the river that will spin a large l.e.d.( Light emitting diode) driven display of spinning words that is controlled by a small "pic" microcontroller. Utilizing persistence of vision affects (like Duchamp's spinning optical works) the "Electropotential Poem" will animate text with the l.e.d. bulbs.

see:

"Word Spin Water Wheel"

"Electropotential Poem"