Beyond Time
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This hour, Radiolab goes to the front lines with men and women who are battling against time -- or at least the common-sense view of time.
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- You're listening to radio on New York Public Radio. - Public Radio WNYC. - This is the sound of, what's this exact title to piece? - 3,500 AD. - This is the sound of 3,580. - I'm knocking on an object that artist Terry Wilcox hopes will be here long after we all turn to dust. - It's actually fast into the bedrock. The engineering is that it will withstand a 200 mile hour wind. - It's like a hair. - Well, it's like a nuclear bomb. - 30 years ago, Terry and a few cranes lifted this 40 foot stick and plunged it into this boulder that we're standing on which overlooks the Hudson. - And the George Washington Bridge is to a right. - The sculpture reflects the sun like a mirror and it's made out of two metals. - Aluminum on the outside and magnesium pieces. - The concept is simple. One day, many moons from now, these two metals will be one. - The phenomenon is they're mixing together. - How do you mean it? - Physically, the layers where the metals are touching, they're physically intermingling, they're evaporating into each other. - It's a process called diffusion. - And in fact, I'll tell you how I heard about it. In 1968, they've opened some minor tomb in Egypt and they find gold and lead bars piled up in the corner. The tomb is about 5,000 years old and the bars have become a solid piece. They think it's happening on a atomic level, but they're not sure, but something is making the metals mix. - Maybe just time. Time cracks foundations, erodes borders, erases anything man creates. Civilization art, particularly art. Time hates art, that's why museums have restores, but here's Terry trying to collaborate with time. - In fact, he says this piece won't be done until time takes the aluminum in the magnesium and fuses them together, which he calculates will take 1,495 years, in a sense, that is when this clock will chime. But until then, all you can really do is look at it, so we walk around this piece. - Oh, somebody made it up on this side, got glass. - You think they scaled up there? - On the boat, sure. - It says Bill, Bill number 98 or something. - Underneath Bill 98, park officials have slapped on some anti graffiti paint. - Some of this paint's still wet. - Terry pulls out a pocket knife and starts to chip some bit away. Underneath the paint, we find more graffiti. - Yeah, it's a graffiti. - Then we find a bullet hole. This is a bullet. - Oh my gosh, somebody shot your art.
Transcription truncated.
This hour, Radiolab goes to the front lines with men and women who are battling against time -- or at least the common-sense view of time.