Palm Springs

We arrived in Palm Springs and had time to check out a couple of the Desert X art installations before going to our Airbnb.

The first one was SPECTER, by Sterling Ruby. It's a big fluorescent orange block, bright and weird in the middle of the desert. It created a fascinating effect, like the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, despite all the people taking pictures around it. It was really windy, so the experience wasn't as good as it could have been, but I still enjoyed seeing it and exploring all its angles.

Just a few minutes away was Revolutions, by Nancy Baker Cahill, an AR experience set in the wind farms landscape that I liked less. This is what the website says:

"The work at the northern windfarms, Revolutions, alludes to the capturing of energy to remedy a man-made crisis. But in doing so, the net effect is disruptive to the flora and fauna of the region. The artist thinks of the drawings as a call-and response of sorts."

I feel AR tends to be disappointing and this wasn't an exception. The piece looked like colorful fireworks on the sky. Nice, but not that inspiring.

After seeing these two pieces, we went to the Aqua Soleil Hotel to get the keys for our Airbnb. The Airbnb was a block of little apartments with a kitchen, bedroom and living room, called Chez Soleil, at 68235 Club Cir. Dr. I liked ours more than what I expected based on the website. We just rested for a bit and went to see a third installation, the screening of Dive In by Superflex. I didn't know what to expect but I liked it a lot. It was this big structure in the dark desert where images of what it looked like a pink aquarium with fish were projected. You could walk around it and the piece had a surrounding deep sound.

We finished the night with a sushi dinner at Musashi, which was pretty good, and then went home. We were tired after the early start and went to sleep early.Read more