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Sculpting the Wind
Fri Sep 02, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Wind Veil 8 - Gateway Village, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2000 Ned Kahn. Hi, I'm Bryan
Yeaton, and today on The Weather Notebook, Robin White talks with artist Ned Kahn,
about how he captures—the wind!
When Ned Kahn was a kid he'd go down to the local junk yard and find interesting
parts and come home and bolt them together.
Kahn: Even from the beginning I was interested in movement. All the first sculptures I
did, even when I was ten years old all had springs or spinning ball bearing parts in
them.
Over time Kahn's interests evolved to building detectors for capturing the movement of
forces like the wind. And where better to place a sculpture of wind detectors than in
downtown San Francisco. Just across from a merry go round, surrounded by urban
traffic on the wall of a non descript building is a vast panel of shiny steel mirrors that
move in the breeze. Atmospheric scientist Paul Doherty knows the sculpture
well.
Doherty: I've been out in the wind my whole life I like the outdoors. I let the wind blow on
me. It moves me around a little bit. I had no idea about the intricate patterns that were
present in the wind until I looked at the wall of a building covered with little mirrors and
as the wind blew across the building it tilted the mirrors.
Kahn's sculpture makes the wind look like explosions of air going in a every direction
at the same time with eddies and curlicues at the corners. Doherty says people like
sailors and farmers have learned to watch the wind out of necessity.
Doherty: All these different people through time have learned to see the wind in the
everyday world but Ned makes it visible in places it's never been visible before - like
Downtown!!
For the Weather Notebook, I'm Robin White.
Today's Links
Ned Kahn\'s Site
http://nedkahn.com/
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