Prometheus. 13x10x11 in. Mold Blown Glass. 2023-2024.
Great Basin National Park, Nevada. Bay Area, California.
In June 2023, an entomologist colleague Madison Sankovitz had been able to find the coordinates of the tree “Prometheus” in Great Basin National Park in Nevada. The Ancient Bristlecone Pines are the oldest trees in the world, and in 1964 their tree rings were studied to understand climate change. A PHD candidate got his core sampling drill bit stuck in the tree, and him and the forest services cut it down so that he could finish his studies. Once they cut down Prometheus, they realized it was at the time, the oldest living organism in the world. Prometheus was over 5,000 years old.
Sankovitz and Landau hiked up to about 10,000 feet in elevation with the coordinates and topographic map in hand, and were able to find Prometheus in the snow. They found the remnants of the tree in the form of a large stump and smaller cuttings, just left there as is decades ago. Landau 3D scanned a part of the cutting, and propped it up in the snow for the best angles to capture the textures.
Back in Oakland, Landau had the scan 3d printed, and then began the moldmaking process to replicate the wood into glass. They created plaster-silica molds to capture the detail of the piece of wood. This glass object is the exact cutting from Prometheus from Great Basin National Park.
Prometheus was cut down 60 years ago; as the stump and cuttings continue to weather, Landau was able to capture a piece of the tree in its state now. A goal of the project is to not only bring light to what happened to Prometheus, but it is to critique our own humanity and human nature. The need of ego for knowledge killed the very thing that we were trying to study, specifically an object much grander than any of us.
Photos by Digital Studio SF and Guru Photography
