March 24th Entry - spiral jetty

For this week’s blog entry I was assigned to pick out an element of “Spiral Jetty” that I found to be the strangest and to relate that element into the remainder of the film. The part that I found to be the strangest was the many comments and focal points on dinosaurs, dinosaur bones/skeletons and reptiles. In particular the focal point pan of two dinosaur skeletons with a red tint on the lens. My initial thoughts were “how do dinosaur bones relate to a spiral road being constructed in shallow water in Utah?” I believe in connects in multiple ways after further contemplation. 1st, I believe there is a graphic match type quality of the imagery of the bony twisted-ness of the dinosaur fossils relating to the ridged-ness and swirling of the rocky spiral. The shapes of each of the designs seem to match together in a symbiotic fashion and relation. It’s as if maybe the dinosaur fossils inspired Smithson to create this rock formation. 2nd, the use of rocks and forming them the way he did may be a comment to the fossils themselves. Fossils are dug up from the earth out of rocks; maybe by putting these rocks back into earth in a formation he is creating an “artistic fossil” of his work. Basically, instead of taking a fossil out he is putting one in. 3rd, maybe the comment on fossils being a part of history ties into the random pages that were torn out and scattered, which relates into the giant picture of Smithson trying to leave a random mark in history by means of artistic sculpture/expression. His spiral jetty was his random mark in history much like the dinosaurs made their make through fossils. Lastly, the one thing I still am not sure about was why the red tint was used when panning with the dinosaur fossils? Maybe red signifies violence? Murder? Extinction? Maybe he chose to use red cause it was bold and stands out? I’m still not sure why he chose red for this particular scene. My most logical reasoning is that it was the closest resemblance to the reddish-brown muddy waters that the spiral’s rock created during construction. That way he was tying in the fossils both graphically (through images) and through relation of color.