Can you dig it?
I’ve previously mentioned a Google Maps-related application in which you click on a point on a map of the world and it shows where you’ll end up on the other side if you were to dig a hole straight through. I found the application here:
http://grad.icmc.usp.br/~cipriani/bighole.php?lang=en
But if it’s not there anymore, just do a Google search for “If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop” and several sites should pop up.
You’ll discover right away that there are very few places on the planet you can dig from and NOT end up at the bottom of an ocean someplace. I live in Bangkok, not all that far from the equator (along which most of the land mass is), and would still have to travel well into Cambodia just to be sure I’d hit the coast of Chile and not have the whole South Pacific flooding into my tunnel.
Good luck with your digging!
No, seriously, the same browse led me to a guy in Oregon who actually is (or was) thinking of digging a hole to China, as so many of us did when we were kids (thought about it, I mean — we didn’t actually dig the hole. At least we didn’t get too far with the shovel before Mom came wailing out of the house screaming something about petunias, and it was no good explaining that the flowerbed was the only place where the ground was soft enough for digging, and that we’d be back back from China before dinner and then we could fill in the hole by bedtime).
ANYWAY, I have sent an email to Mike Rathbun of Estacada, Oregon, asking for an update on his four-year-old webpage:
http://mikerathbun.com/currentproj/digtochina/index.html
… in which he lays out the plans for digging to China in detail. But there’s a catch, and isn’t there always? A careful reading (or even a slovenly reading) of this amazing plan reveals that it’s not really a plan to dig to China at all, it’s a plan for a piece of conceptual artwork.
The first clue is the title of the page: “Mike Rathbun Sculpture”. Why would a sculptor want to dig to China? If it was “Mike Rathbun Engineering” that might be a different story.
It turns out that Mike wants to set up an installation that looks like a pit being dug, with a deck around it from which you can peer into the pit. He says there’ll be a screen and a camera down there, but beyond that is pretty vague. Is the camera taking a picture of the people looking in and then relaying it back at them on the screen, waving at “China” when in fact it’s themselves waving? Or is the screen showing real-time images of people in China looking into an identical pit there and waving? He’s not clear.
Either way, I think it’s a clever idea. Since we’re not actually digging a hole to China, I might have even settled for a mirror at the bottom of the pit. But here’s Mike’s prospectus (all copyrighted, as are the pictures I’ve borrowed here, so please no thievery):
Dig to China: Second Naiveté
We’re going to dig a hole to China.
We’re going all the way through to the other side of the world. We’re doing it for every kid who every started the job and had to give up because he was called into dinner.
The fabled “Dig to China” is one of the last truly great expeditions yet unconquered . Now its time has come.
“Dig to China” references turn-of-the-century notions of exploration, world fairs and amazement. The work consists of two dig sites, one in the United States of American and one in China. Each is a construction of mounded dirt surrounded by a wooden scaffold structure that allows visitors to peer down into the hole all the way through to the other side of the earth.
China sees America. America sees China. Real people in real time.
The technology is available. The hole is a screen and concealed camera with a direct feed that enables the visitor to see through to the other side in real time. Imagine looking down into the ground through the center of the earth and seeing the sky on the other side or waving to someone you would not otherwise encounter.
One can not be cynical without being a romantic. We scoff at the notion of the amazing expedition not because we find it ridiculously impossible but because we need it to be true. So, we have found something so ridiculous it allows us to give ourselves to it completely with a second naiveté.
Mike worked out the budget, and I’ve asked him if anyone was willing to foot the bill. It covered the wood and dirt for apparently two sites, a dual video-conferencing system, a video projector, “travel” and accommodation expenses and “compensation” of $4,000 apiece for himself, Russell Rathbun and Thaddaeus Dahlberg.
The total was $65,131. Not bad.
Mike’s webpage has a few of his other sculptures, like “Sweeping Beauty”, pictured here, and a rather loopy 1999 review of one of his shows from the LA Press Enterprise. Here are some excerpts from the review:
An engaging set of exhibits [Picasso and ancient Egypt are also kicked around in the same article] remind us how many people before us made art out of life’s brevity… The installation by Michael Rathbun is simultaneously wondrous and nauseating … [It] combines this sense of being both lost and found. The piece … is something like a boat , like the cavernous body of a ship before it’s skin has been put on.
Attached to various end points are smaller boats, like lifeboats riding into a dangerous storm to rescue those aboard the mother ship. The installation - described by the latitude and longitude of the site - seems about to sweep over you, over take you, bury you, drown you, transform you into a coral-eyed ghost .
The work captures all the power and allure of the sea, and all its danger. It reminds you why people surf, and why they go to the beach to figure out what is wrong with their lives, and why they set out to sea in small boats and travel the world holding on only to their sense of where, and thus who, they are by the stars and a feeling that the next day will bring a truer tide and a swifter wind.
The reviewer caught a glimpse of Mike’s imagination anyway. She’s got a pretty good imagination too, I’d say.
ANYWAY, more on digging to China if Mike gets back to me, or if someone outside the Hollywood studios actually gives it a go.
Mike Rathbun’s almost made it! Well, I’m not sure, but he’s finally (it’s mid-March now) replied to my October request for an update with the follwing email:
Paul, how are you? Still working on the dig to china. Hoping to hear something soon. mike