So Chicago's got a new plaza, or series of plazas. Millenium Park. And I just recently got my first look at one of the art installations there. It was described to me as "a fountain," but... wow. Super-inadequate.
This is a matching pair of giant monoliths made of glass bricks, with sheets of water cascading down the sides. There aren't any fences or signs; You're supposed to run around apeshit-style, splashing and screaming and what not. No one stops you.
The facing side of each monolith has a LED screen embedded behind the bricks, and it cycles about a thousand different images. Sometimes, it shows waterfalls or rainforest downpour scenes, or lakes. But the kids playing in the... uh, fountain... get really excited when one of a jillion random faces pops up on the screens. Because after maybe five or six minutes of staring, blinking, and smiling....
The faces do this.
Any public art that elicits screams of delight and wonder from five-year-olds every ten minutes is okay by me, no matter how creepy a three-story-tall child's face seems at first glance.
Apart from the face monoliths, there's also this giant chrome thing.
It has a classy, offical name, but most people call it The Bean. Three guesses why.
The Bean, apart from reminding entirely too many people of a certain spaceship from a certain sci-fi movie about a certain flight of a certain navigator, has a little secret. Walk into the arch, and look up, and...
Well, spend three minutes staring and jumping up and down and pointing, like everyone else around you.
Chicago rocks my ass so hard. I am never leaving.
