Sun, Land and Sea, (marquette)

Sun, Land and Sea (marquette).  Sun, Land and Sea is the central ‘act’ in Lye’s most ambitious large scaled work.  It would be housed in a theatre – a ‘Temple of Lightning’, shaped like a cumulous cloud, several hundred feet high.  Visitors would be ferried by boat passing by other large scaled kinetic works rising from a lake surrounding the temple.  They would then take their seats in the Temple to witness the finale, Sun, Land and Sea.

“The doors are closed.  The Temple is battened down.  The Sea God raises up off his sea bed, and pauses en route to send undulating waves along his entire length.  When they reach his head they make a most crashing kind of sound, something like you hear from a bull whip.  It’s the same principle.  The Sea God fronts on to the Cave Goddess.  The undulating layers run along his back in ever increasing tempo.  The Cave Goddess responds with her flips. Now the Sea God pauses.  The Cave Goddess strains to flip.  The sound of her flipping is heard, but she hasn’t flipped, when, bang, The God of the Sea shots a twenty-five million volt arc of electricity through the Cave Goddess to the Sun Ball.  And don’t ask me why.  Ha ha ha.  Ask Freud.” - Len Lye