UNPOPULAR PUBLIC ART PROJECT BY RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER CANCELED

After some five years of planning, a monumental public art project by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has been canceled in the face of stiff protests by residents in the small Welsh town that was to host it, according to Artnet. Planned to liven up the waterfront in Cardigan, Wales, the project was to consist of 127 buoys in the River Teifi, connected to a battery of microphones on nearby docks. The mics would store noises from passersby, which would be transformed into pulsing lights on the buoys, activated by the movements of the river. Loudspeakers in the floats would also replay the conversations captured by the mics, while a website would allow people from all over the world to participate.

The work was called Turbulence—a title that proved all too appropriate, as it raised the hackles of locals. A petition against the proposal was launched that drew some five thousand signatures, and a recent poll by the Art Fund (which was sponsoring the $640,000 piece, with Channel 4 and Arts Council England) found that 51 percent of people in Cardigan were opposed, of which a full 37 percent were “strongly opposed.” Thus, after exhaustive preparations including such things as investigation of the project’s impact on Atlantic salmon migration, it was abandoned. A joint statement from the artist and his backers stated, “This has been a long journey and we are extremely sad that it has come to this conclusion.”