Joseph DeLappe: Project 929: Mapping the Solar

Joseph DeLappe is a Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance, sculpture and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad ‐ including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada. In 2006 he began the project dead‐in‐iraq, to type consecutively all names of America's military casualties from the war in Iraq into the America's Army first person shooter online recruiting game. He also directs the iraqimemorial.org project, an ongoing web based exhibition and open call for proposed memorials to the many thousand of civilian casualties from the war in Iraq. He has lectured throughout the world regarding his work, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, CBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and on The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio. His works have been featured in the New York Times, The Australian Morning Herald, Artweek, Art in America and in the 2010 book from Routledge entitled Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Game. He has authored two book chapters, including “The Gandhi Complex: The Mahatma in Second Life.” Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (New York, Routledge 2011) and “Playing Politics: Machinima as Live Performance and Document”, Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (London, UK, Continuum 2012).

Joseph DeLappe used an Xtracycle-equipped long-tail touring bike to draw a 460-mile chalk circle around US Air Force bases in an art project aiming to highlight how American deserts could be wired up to solar panels to create clean green energy. The project, titled Project 929: Mapping the Solar, was completed May 19th through 29th. DeLappe physically and symbolically drew the line around the Nevada Test Site, Yucca Mountain, Nellis Air Force Range, and Area 51, marking a geographical area equal to the measurement of a solar farm the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated would be “more than enough to meet the country’s entire energy demand.” In order to complete the ride, DeLappe rode the bike approximately 50 miles per day for nine days in the desert above Las Vegas. During the ride, DeLappe had to stop to change chalk approximately every two miles, enduring up to 11 hour days in blistering heat. In his statement about the project, DeLappe said: "Conceptually, Project 929: Mapping the Solar was an ideational and activist exercise towards representing another possible choice we could make as a nation, physically re-imagining geographical space for energy sustainability.”

Materials include digital images, printed ephemera, two large-format photographs, website printouts, and project ephemera.