{"id":14437,"date":"2021-02-10T10:10:55","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T18:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/?p=14437"},"modified":"2021-05-12T10:15:17","modified_gmt":"2021-05-12T17:15:17","slug":"the-phone-to-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/radical-joy-revealed\/the-phone-to-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phone to Nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"
A colorful mandala made of trash on a Mexico beach\u2026 a testimony to salmon endangered by dams, constructed of rusty wire and feathers and overlooking the Columbia River\u2026 \u201cZero Circles,\u201d big O\u2019s formed of natural materials to plead for reducing the number of clear-cut old-growth forests to zero. These are some of the many spiritual-artistic-ecological works that Daniel Dancer<\/a> has created over the years. A gifted writer as well as an artist, he details the stories behind some of these projects in his book\u00a0Desperate Prayers<\/a>. For several years, his primary project has been Art for the Sky, projects he does worldwide with school children and other groups. With their own bodies as the medium, participants form iconic images special to their bioregion\u2014pictures that only make sense when seen from high above.<\/div>\n
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Recently, Dancer installed a new project on Aspen Mountain in Colorado. Phone of the Winds is a telephone attached to a tree and, as he notes on a sign accompanying the work,\u00a0\u201cThis is a phone connected to Nowhere. It is a portal where you can speak privately to anyone, alive or deceased.\u201d<\/div>\n
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He was inspired by a similar project<\/a> in Otsuchi, Japan, which Itaru Sasaki built in a hilltop garden above the sea so that he might communicate with a cousin who had died. The phone grew in importance after the devastating tsunami of 2011 that took more than 20,000 lives. People began seeking out the wind phone to as a way to connect with lost family members, many of whom had disappeared in the wave without a trace.<\/div>\n
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