trade that feel for anything and i hope this is a roiledder today to stop expo and help those around you and be a help to host in your life the loved ones that bring you joy. thank you very much. (applause) . (applause) congratulations to all of the heros and artists thank you again to our sponsors at&t. chevron energy solutions, connie frank foundation, jinn ethic

intel and mc castle foundation the stanley s foundation union bank, visa wells far go pg&e cummings west and rich and gudegee guggenheim. placegees web corp builders and the lunch is due to our in-kind media sponsors who we would like to also thank c cbs and one 07 a and one 06.9 f and suffrage business times. san francisco chronicle and san francisco gate.com and san francisco mag magazine and beach pointed babylon and thank you to awful you who support the foundation, the general and this event we look forward to seeing many of you this evening at hearts after dark. ladies and gentlemen ...

>> hello. welcome to "culturewire." we are here today with bay area artist jody chanel, and we are here to see the plaza where your piece has just been

installed. >> i have been doing large-scale paintings in the galleries and museums, and the idea that in the future, i could do something that would hang out a little bit longer than the duration of the installation the kind of appeal to me. i quickly found out about the san francisco arts commission school and realized there was a pre-qualified school you had to apply to, so i applied to the. >> how long did it take you to develop this work for the plaza? >> this was a fast track project. design development was about a month. >> let's look at the beautiful mural. i have never seen a mural created on asphalt. >> the heat of the asphalt, a new layer of asphalt. then, these wire rope templates

that were fabricated for the line work get laid down and literally stamped into the asphalt, and then everything was hand-painted. >> maybe you could talk about some of the symbolism, maybe starting in the middle and working out. >> [inaudible] the flower of industry. >> it is like a compass. there's an arrow pointing north. >> within the great bear consolation, there are two pointed stars here. they typically lead one to the northstar, otherwise known as polaris. so i thought it has a layer of theme. >> let's talk about some of the other elements in the peace. we are walking along, and there is a weather vane. there's a sweet little bird hanging on the side. what kind of bird is that? >> [inaudible]

the smallest of the gulf species, and it lives around the bay area. >> you want to talk about the types of flour patterns that you send? >> [inaudible] around 1926 or so by the dahlia society. >> what is this bird here? >> that is the california quail. >> coming up here, we had a little blustery theme. what is this area here? >> this is supposed to be the side view, the expense of the golden gate bridge. >> there it is. >> there are really beautiful elements of architecture still around, i would say that it gives that feeling over to the work. >> what are your hopes for it?

>> that in a way it just becomes part of the area. i think it is starting to have that feeling. people utilize it. they sit and, and have their lunch and play on -- they sit and, and have their lunch and play on that -- they sit and come and have their lunch and play on it. just for it to be part of the neighborhood. that is my hope. >> is such a beautiful addition to our public art in san francisco. thank you for joining us. it was nice to meet you. and thank you for telling us about your beautiful mural. thanks for watching "culturewire."

>> what if you could make a memorial that is more about information and you are never fixed and it can go wherever it wants to go? everyone who has donated to it could use it, host it, share it. >> for quite a great deal of team she was hired in 2005, she struggled with finding the correct and appropriate visual expression. >> it was a bench at one point. it was a darkened room at another point. but the theme always was a theme of how do we call people's attention to the issue of speci species extinction. >> many exhibits do make long detailed explanations about species decline and biology of birds and that is very useful for lots of purposes. but i think it is also important to try to pull at the strings inside people.

>> missing is not just about specific extinct or endangered species. it is about absence and a more fundamental level of not knowing what we are losing and we need to link species loss to habitat loss and really focuses much on the >> of course the overall mission of the academy has to do with two really fundamental and important questions. one of which is the nature of life. how did we get here? the second is the challenge of sustainability. if we are here how are we going to find a way to stay? these questions resonated very strongly with maya. >> on average a species disappears every 20 minutes. this is the only media work that i have done. i might never do another one because i'm not a media artist per se but i have used the

medium because it seemed to be the one that could allow me to here. memorials to me are different from artworks. they are artistic, but memorials have a function. >> it is a beautiful scupltural objective made with bronze and lined with red wood from water tanks in clear lake. that is the scupltural form that gives expression to maya's project. if you think about a cone or a bull horn, they are used to get the attention of the crowd, often to communicate an important message. this project has a very important message and it is about our earth and what we are losing and what we are missing and what we don't even know is gone. >> so, what is missing is starting with an idea of loss,

but in a funny way the shape of this cone is, whether you want to call it like the r.c.a. victor dog, it is listen to the earth and what if we could create a portal that could look at the past, the present and the future? >> you can change what is then missing by changing the software, by changing what is projected and missing. so, missing isn't a static installation. it is an installation that is going to grow and change over time. and she has worked to bring all of this information together from laboratory after laboratory including, fortunately, our great fwroup of researche e-- g researchers at the california academy. >> this couldn't have been more site specific to this place and we think just visually in terms of its scupltural form it really holds its own against the architectural largest and grandeur of the building.

it is an unusual compelling object. we think it will draw people out on the terrace, they will see the big cone and say what is that. then as they approach the cone tell hear these very unusual sounds that were obtained from the cornell orinthology lab. >> we have the largest recording of birds, mammals, frogs and insects and a huge library of videos. so this is an absolutely perfect opportunity for us to team up with a world renown, very creative inspirational artist and put the sounds and sights of the animals that we study into a brand-new context, a context that really allows people to appreciate an esthetic way of the idea that we might live in the world without these sounds or sites. >> in the scientific realm it is shifting baselines. we get used to less and less,

diminished expectations of what it was. >> when i came along lobsters six feet long and oysters 12 inches within they days all the oyster beds in new york, manhattan, the harbor would clean the water. so, just getting people to wake up to what was just literally there 200 years ago, 150 years ago. you see the object and say what is that. you come out and hear these intriguing sounds, sounds like i have never heard in my life. and then you step closer and you almost have a very intimate experience. >> we could link to different institutions around the globe, maybe one per continent, maybe two or three in this country, then once they are all networked, they begin to communicate with one another and share information. in 2010 the website will launch, but it will be what you would call an informational website and then we are going to try to,

by 2011, invite people to add a memory. so in a funny way the member rely grows and there is something organic about how this memorial begins to have legs so to speak. so we don't know quite where it will go but i promise to keep on it 10 years. my goal is to raise awareness and then either protect forests from being cut down or reforest in ways that promote biodiversity. >> biodiverse city often argued to be important for the world's human populations because all of the medicinal plants and uses that we can put to it and fiber that it gives us and food that it gives us. while these are vital and important and worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars, the part that we also have to be able to communicate is the more spiritual sense of how important it is that we get to live side

by side with all of these forms that have three billion years of history behind them and how tragic it would be not commercially and not in a utilitarian way but an emotio l emotional, psychological, spiritual way if we watch them one by one disappear. >> this is sort of a merger between art and science and advocacy in a funny way getting people to wake unand realize what is going on -- wake up and realize what is going on. so it is a memborial trying to get us to interpret history and look to the past. they have always been about lacking at the past so we proceed forward and maybe don't commit the same mistakes.

>> here we are at the embarcadero. we are standing at one of locations for the street artists. can you tell me about this particular location, the program? >> this location is very significant. this was the very first and only location granted by the board of supervisors for the street artist when the program began in 1972. how does a person become a street artist? there are two major tenants. you must make the work yourself and you must sell the work yourself. a street artist, the license, then submitting the work to a committee of artists. this committee actually watches them make the work in front of them so that we can verify that it is all their own work.

>> what happened during the holiday to make this an exciting location? >> this would be a magic time of year. you would probably see this place is jammed with street artists. as the no, there is a lottery held at 6 in the morning. that is how sought after the spaces are. you might get as many as 150 street artists to show up for 50 spaces. >> what other areas can a licensed street artist go to? >> they can go to the fisherman's wharf area. they can go in and around union square. we have space is now up in the castro, in fact. >> how many are there? >> we have about 420. >> are they here all year round? >> out of the 420, i know 150 to sell all year round.

i mean like five-seven days a week. >> are they making their living of of this? >> this is their sole source of income for many. >> how long have you been with this program. how much has it changed? >> i have been with the program since it began 37 and a half years ago but i have seen changes in the trend. fashion comes and goes. >> i think that you can still find plenty of titis perhaps. >> this is because the 60's is retro for a lot of people. i have seen that come back, yes. >> people still think of this city as the birth of that movement. great, thank you for talking about the background of the program.