Passage: Displaced Sea/Seeking the Permanente

Left: Fung Collaboratives / Passage: Displaced Sea/Seeking the Permanente (detail of center image).

Center: Fung Collaboratives / Passage: Displaced Sea/Seeking the Permanente / proposal/concept drawing, inkjet print on variable substrate, size variable, 2014
A proposal for Fung Collaboratives for a project in the mountains of San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties.

Right :Fung Collaboratives / Passage: Historical Concepts / Ships in the Landscape / Djerassi Installation, concept drawing, inkjet print on variable substrate, size variable, 2014
An initial scan of concepts for Fung Collaboratives for this project, related to San Francisco Bay Area sites and appropriate imagery/materials.

The 'sky ship' concept is a variation of earlier aerial towed multi-beam sonar works (using LIDAR technology) to create a 'bathymetric scan of Broadway,
considered as part of an exhibition at the Lance Fung Gallery, NYC, NY, in the mid-1990's and related projects as shown in:
The Sea within the Land: Environmental Bathymetery / Multi-beam/Side-scan Sonar Works/Concepts
, 1998-2016



PASSAGE: DISPLACED SEA/SEEKING THE PERMANENTE / Proposal for the San Francisco Peninsula

Displaced Sea/Seeking the Permanente utilizes a solar-powered, programmed, autonomous, inflatable ‘Sky Ship’, towing a LIDAR scan instrument (analogus to a deep-sea, multi-beam sonar array) to scan the landscape along a NW-SE trajectory of the San Francisco Peninsula containing fragments of the Permanente Terrane, altered and displaced by the Pilarcitos, San Andreas and other faults. The sonar system will gather and transmit visual data as if the contemporary terrain were the ancient sea floor of the Permanente Terrane’s origin. The altitude of the Sky Ship above the contemporary landscape is based upon a theoretical depth of the sea at the time of the depostion of the Permanente Terrane during Cretaceous Period some 90 million years ago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. A confluence of histories is suggested by the analogy of the Cretaceous sea displaced into the contemporary atmosphere as well as the Sky ship’s trajectory referencing the 2500Km journey (over 90 million years), of the Permanente Terrane from the mid-Pacific to the central Coast Range of California.
The sonar imagery is processed and output to ground-based recievers, cell phones, printouts, flags, murals, etc., for tracking of the sky ship and visualization of the landscape as a function of complex geologic and oceanic dynamics.

CALERA LIMESTONE: PERMANENTE TERRANE

Foraminiferal limestone (Upper and Lower Cretaceous)—Pelagic gray, gray-green, black, and pink, locally bituminous and (or) oolitic, foraminiferal limestone and minor black to gray, nodular to lenticular radiolarian chert. Foraminifers and sparse megafossils indicate that limestone formed at equatorial latitudes between the Late Cretaceous (Turonian) and the late Lower Cretaceous (Hauterivian). Limestone was deposited in shallow to deep water, open-ocean, seamount, and (or) oceanic plateau settings. This seamount gradually moved from far to the south in the Pacific Ocean and became attached and exposed in the Santa Cruz Mountains by the gradual processes associated with plate tectonics. (Adaped from McLaughlin and others, 2001, and Sliter and others, 1991).

References: Brabb, E.E., Graymer, R.W., Jones, D.L., Geology of the Onshore Part of San Mateo County, California: Derived from the Digital Database Open-file 98-137, USGS, 1998; McLaughlin, R.J., Clark, J.C., Brabb, E.E., Helley, E.J., and Colón, C.J., Geologic maps and structure sections of the southwestern Santa Clara Valley and southern Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties, California, Pamphlet to accompany Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-2373, USGS, 2001; Sliter, W.V., Murchey, B.L., McLaughlin, R.J., and Kistler, R.W., Permanente Terrane: History of Early Cretaceous seamount formation in the eastern Pacific [abs.]: Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, v. 23, p. 98. 1991; Tarduno, J.A., McWilliams, M., Debiche, M.G., Sliter, W.V., and Blake, M.C., Franciscan Complex Calera Limestones: Accreted Remnants of Farallon Plate Oceanic Plateaus, Nature, 317, 345-347, 1985; Wakabayashi, John, Distribution of Displacement on and Evolution of a Young Transfrom Fault System: The Northern San Andreas Fault System, California, Tectonics, Vol 18, No. 6 pg. 1245-1274, December, 1999.

Related SFWC Projects

San Francisco Wharf Complex - Geologic Analog/Research - Overview & Phase III Preliminary

San Francisco Wharf Complex / American Industrial Center Carbonate Group


Passage: Displaced Sea/Seeking the Permanente