Not Just Another Pretty Face 

Random Sky

Hyde Park Art Center > Exhibitions > Random Sky

Created by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle with Mark Hereld and Rick Gribenas, Random Sky is a large scale digital projection uses live weather information taken from a weathervane fixed to the front of the Art Center to determine the motion and pattern of the composition.

Inspired by Daniel Buren’s abstract minimalist in situ works from the late 1960’s, Random Sky is a digital program that generates random calculations in real-time. Its performance maintains a degree of unpredictability informed by external data culled from the weather instruments located on the exterior of the art center. Projected as oscillating vertical blue and white bands across the center’s glass facade, Random Sky results in tendencies rather than wholly predetermined narratives. The project is a semi-permanent installation literally wired in the building’s physical as well as digital infrastructure. It is meant to reside within and without the architecture of the center and to be called upon at any moment.

  • April 24, 2006 – July 9, 2006
  • Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery

This work was viewed outside nightly from 7:30pm – 10:00pm and was made possible by U.S. Equities, Inc.

Random Sky (inside), 2006, Digital installation and weather vane, 10 x 80 feet.

Weather writes, erases, and rewrites itself upon the sky with the fluidity of language; it is with language that we have sought throughout history to apprehend it.

–Richard Hamblyn, The Invention of Clouds

About Inigo Manglano-Ovalle

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle has exhibited his art work at numerous nationally and internationally acclaimed institutions, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Sao Paulo Biennial, the Ruffino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City. Other projects include institutions in Barcelona, Venice, Frankfurt and Singapore, as well as here in Chicago at the Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art. He currently lives and works in Chicago and is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

About Mark Hereld

Mark Hereld is a scientist and engineer working in the Futures Lab at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. His research has ranged from physics, through astronomy and astrophysics, and into computer science where he now puts most of his energies. Early work in the area of experimental general relativity taught him how to work in a vacuum. Later, while developing infrared cameras and telescopes for experiments at the South Pole, he became comfortable with working in the cold and being kept in the dark. He now spends his working hours simulating aspects of the real world and developing technologies that enliven virtual worlds.

About Rick Gribenas

Rick Gribenas is an installation and sound artist currently residing in Chicago. He earned his MFA from the University of Illinois- Chicago in 2006. He is a member of the Noise Ensemble Antennacle, which has performed widely both nationally and internationally. He is has a planned solo performance tour in Scandinavia in 2006.

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