Christo's Floating Piers | Hacker News Reader

Christo's Floating Piers

smithsonianmag.com

71 pointswallflower10 comments

It's doing well. 620,000 visitors in 9 days so far. Long lines, traffic jams.

Pictures at http://brescia.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/16_giugno_20/the-... (Italian text but it doesn't matter).

Live feed plus timelapses at http://www.corriere.it/infografiche/infografiche.shtml?pagin...

Yep but hard to tell just by numbers. All my friends that visited it, including the ones that love Christo and have books and drafts of his projects, were highly unimpressed by the experience, and by the not excellent organization.

Just to be clear, his public art isn't universally loved. He's been trying for over a decade to string fabric over the Arkansas River in Colorado. The locals almost universally hate the idea but it looks like there isn't anything they can do about it because the project has a permit from the Bureau of Land Management. http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/01/02/judge-rules-against-op...

I think people love, in addition to the aesthetics, the unpretentiousness of his projects. Even the art journalism scene seems to respect the pure aesthetic nature of the projects and to hold off their usual bullshitting.

I think this kind of art could also be made to work at a smaller scale; a lot of urban environments would benefit from providing public space for temporary projects instead of permanent installations.

This project is not too pretentious. Some of his previous ones have been on a monumental scale.

I will be there later today! Very excited. I will post some photos here if I have a chance. Here's an article with a few more details on the construction: http://www.wired.com/2016/06/heres-christo-built-huge-17m-fl...

Realtime webcam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBKNCPKBE8

Here's an earlier thread including photos from a community member who visited the installation: Christo’s Newest Project: Walking on Water https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924673

Curious: who finds this stuff ?

Finds? Christo is an internationally famous artist who's been working for decades and has done large-scale projects throughout the world, including in New York City, Berlin and Japan.

Or did you mean funds? According to the article, this project is completely self-funded through sales of his other work. Of course, I'm sure working out good deals with local workers and craftsmen is part of his acumen.

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