A Surface In Between

As a follow up to the Underground Skate Plaza post it’s time to investigate another project from The Side Effects of Urethane. This one is an installation called A Surface In Between. A Surface In Between was a group art show. The The Side Effects of Urethane (TSEOU) collective organized the show and built out the space, which included the skateable installation you see above. I like the way these guys think. You will too if you keep reading after the jump.

A Surface In Between

The geometric object in the middle of the room was painted to look like a flat shaded 3D model. In some pictures it’s completely disorienting because of the artificial shading overpowers the brain’s perceptions. The surrounding white walls that transition onto a white floor create the illusion of a blue model floating in negative space. I can only assume that it was a bit easier to navigate in person, especially once a few wheel tracks and scuffs had been laid down.

It’s fascinating that TSEOU is able to get funding to build these whimsical structures for skateboarding in the name of art. Who pays for tall this? Maybe there’s some sort of government grant. The web site is a bit scarce on details. The date of the show isn’t even listed. There are a lot of pictures obviously, because that’s where I got these from, but you have to view them in a Flash interface with a maddeningly slow transition between slides, even when you manually initiate the change.

And let’s not forget about the excuse for all this skateboarding, it’s Art. Not all of the art was skateboard related, but I’ve highlighted some examples that are, just for the sake of the context of this web site.

Skate installations in the U.S.: The Free Basin

Did Cheech and Chong name this installation Free Basin? Get it? Get it? The more practical Free Basin, is a wooden bowl that is suspended. Riders and “art patrons” enter from below. The Free Basin has traveled from Chicago to New York (with some of the same art shown in A Surface in Between). Since the first show was in Chicago, I’m wondering if this is the same traveling wooden bowl that originated downstate in Champaign-Urbana Illinois. Some guys built a modular wooden bowl that came apart for transport, with the idea being you could rent it for skate demos. This was in the late 90’s or right around 2000, so timing for that thing wasn’t exactly right. Although, I don’t know if there will ever be favorable enough conditions for the Rent-A-Bowl concept to work. The last mention of the Free Basin I can find is dated to 2004, so I can’t comment on it’s final resting place.

The Tylenol/Autumn Bowl

While looking for the Free Basin Bowl I did a search for the Tylenol Bowl, because that’s what I had thought I was looking for. Supposedly the Tylenol pain killer people funded a bowl, but I think it is actually the Autumn Bowl that they paid for and not the Free Basin. It was confusing because they both appeared as sponsored/funded bowls in New York. There’s a bit on the NPR web site about Tylenol and Extreme!™ sports that mentions it, but I can’t get the audio to load.

The Autumn Bowl seems to be a case where the locals call it by one name and the rest of the world calls it the Tylenol bowl. The shot above is from Flickr user named plemeljr. The details of this bowl are interesting. For whatever reason, Tylenol actually funded it originally, but now it is run like the infamous PISS of yesteryear, (Private Indoor Skate Spot). Keys are handed out to those who pay the rent. About a year ago there was a fire in the building that housed it and people were worried about the fate of the Autumn Bowl, but apparently it came out OK and was going to possibly be moved. Of course that was May of 2006 and I don’t know what finally happened.

I’d like to close out this article by mentioning to all the corporations out there with money to burn that I’d be happy to coordinate your next venture into private skate spots for the sake of art and/or marketing.