An excerpt from the panel discussion "The History, Present and Future of Sky Art", SKY ART Conference '81, M.I.T. Center for Advanced Visual Studies, September 25, 1981   "Coming here, the thought struck me that out of our Western perception we usually draw down very tightly onto a piece of ground that might be only as big as M.I.T. "But if all is well tonight in Guatemala, all is well tonight in Jaipur. Believe me, the sense of time that we relate our art to usually revolves around our Western thought. I was thinking about the area where you pass out of Port Piraeus, and you go past Cape Sounion. You look up at the Temple of Sounion and it is still working very well. It comes from history, but it is now.

"If you were at Saqqara today about noon the sun would be playing its rhythms across all the architecture. If you were at Pagan today the wind might have been blowing and the chimes at the tops of the temples would be ringing very loudly. Four thousand some temples-history, but still alive. If you were in Jaipur or Delhi, you would be observing and recording from the time instruments of Jai Singh. I'm sure it was a sunny day in India. Come November 1 at Lake Pátzcuauro, kites would be flying-bigger than man, bigger than automobiles, bigger than trucks. Sky drawing is going on near Las Vegas. I was there not too long ago and they were advertising Budweiser. Las Vegas is doing beautifully. At night it sends out messages clear as anything I've ever seen. The icons of American culture. The Sandia solar energy project I visited recently is outstanding. It's not delivering all the megawatts we need, but it's a very beautiful, beautiful site. Fireworks in the villages of Chichicastenango are waking up the dead, calling back and forth from the living to the souls of the deceased.

"Finally, the thought struck me as the 747 was taking off at O'Hare Field that this is all way too much-I feel very insignificant in light of all this. Everything I have learned has come from these places. I hope you have a chance to see a piece I am working on that is from the Cambridge side of the Charles River to the Boston side. What I'm involved in relates to a time incident and to a light incident. It works on a very, very accurate sense of timing, and it lasts less than five minutes-so, if you're there at 12:07 you've missed it. You must stand on the Cambridge side to see it; you'll be on the backside of the mirror panels that are set to reflect sunlight across the river to a retro-reflector board on the Boston side. The board is covered with red, yellow and blue reflectors. The colors aren't about design; they separate the board into sections to help you track the progress and speed of the reflected sunlight's passage.

"Attacking the Boston skyline is a difficult problem, but I think this works."