{"id":88212,"date":"2024-11-02T07:49:13","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T14:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=88212"},"modified":"2024-11-06T06:22:26","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T13:22:26","slug":"delta-solar-ruins-art-in-the-aftermath-of-ambition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/delta-solar-ruins-art-in-the-aftermath-of-ambition\/","title":{"rendered":"Delta Solar Ruins: Art in the Aftermath of Ambition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Someone should slap a signature on these things and call them art. Land art.<\/h4>\n

The Delta Solar Ruins near Hinckley, Utah, either tell the story of an ambitious but ill-fated solar energy experiment or, as at least one U.S. District Court judge would have it, a massive fraud. Beginning in the mid aughts, a Utah-based company promised to revolutionize solar energy by using sheets of plastic, referred to as “lenses,” attached to metal poles called “trees.” These lenses were meant to concentrate sunlight in order to produce large amounts of electricity. Over a ten-year span, thousands of customers bought into the vision, purchasing the lenses to claim federal tax credits and hoping to receive rental income once the operation began generating energy.<\/h4>\n

The project was never connected to the electrical grid, however, and there is no evidence any power was actually generated. In 2018, Judge David Nuffer determined<\/a> the founders had perpetuated a fraud and were liable for the total customers had claimed in tax credits: more than $50 million. The \u201csolar plant\u201d has now fallen into disrepair, the lenses are in tatters, and the trees are crumbling to the ground like pieces a deadwood forest.<\/h4>\n

Sure, we could write this off as just another Utah multi-level marketing scheme gone bad. Or we could call it art.<\/h4>\n

We\u2019ll tell Hikmet Loe to get started on the book immediately. The UMFA can begin scheduling tours.<\/h4>\n

Human interaction with the natural environment? Check. Entropy? Check. Charting the path of celestial bodies. Check? Using the vastness and isolation of the desert as both medium and metaphor. Double check. Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt couldn\u2019t have asked for more in a land art project.<\/h4>\n
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