Parkfield Field Trips
During the past six weeks I have made two field trips to Parkfield to scope out the site in which the intervention will take place next year.
The first excursion took place on the 2nd and 3rd October. I met with the landowner John Varian onsite to discuss requirements needed to install the shake table and steel rods next June. I have access to the site from the 1st of June 2008. A crucial and conceptual component of the intervention is the excavation of a 20ft x 13ft x 5ft deep footprint for the earthquake shake table to be installed into. The top of the shake table will be level with the land. John has agreed for the excavation to take place and has offered the usage of his backhoe and 3ft bucket to dig the trench next June.
During the five months I will be in Parkfield during 2008, I will be living onsite in a vacant and incomplete log wood cabin that is located in the field in which intervention takes place. The log wood cabin will be home, base camp and field management centre all in one. It is a very fortunate situation to have a wonderful existing ready made structure available to use which is also directly onsite. Robert Smithsons Partially Buried Woodshed from 1970 comes to mind.
My second trip to Parkfield was this weekend just past, the 5th and 6th November. Driving into Parkfield just before dusk from San Miguel groups of motorcycle riders were heading out of town. Rolling into town around dusk I realised that the first weekend in October a motorcyle run is held in which 2500 motorcycle and riders head out to Parkfield for the day and do what bike riders do. Drink beer, listen to music, eat some beef, dog whistle then avoid or not, getting into a fight! Glad to experience the noisiest night I am likely to spend in Parkfield, though apparently the rodeo draws a few characters. The Parkfield rodeo takes place next 30th and 31st of June 2008.
I met with a Verizon technician the following morning to sound out what is required in installing a phone line and internet gateway access. No problem which is good news. My options are either a 56k dialup connection or a T1 line and nothing in between. I need to place an order for the service to be installed and ascertain as to what speed my T1 connection will be. A video and audio streaming server will play an important role next year with the work having a greater outreach than the site itself by enabling this streaming component to reach ones living room via the internet. It is seeming likely that The Lab in San Francscio will host a one week long video streaming installation late July next year. I am looking for a Los Angeles space to do the same. More on this later in future posts.
Spent the rest of the morning photographing the site and four survey markers which roughly plot where the machine and rods will be installed. Had a great drive up Highway One back to San Francisco. Thanks Chrissy for travelling down, the ideas and taking a bunch of photographs.
Posted: November 7th, 2007 under blog.allshookup.org.
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