VALLEY OF HEARTS DELIGHT
Night Sky Over Silicon Valley, February 13, 1956
September - October 2015
In 1956, William Shockley, a hotshot engineer for Bell Labs, moved to the west coast in order to be close to his mother. He started his own company, Shockley Semiconductor, in an old fruit packing shed in Mountain View, located in what was then known as the Valley of Hearts Delight. Shockley was such a jerk that all of his best employees (known forever after as "The Traitorous Eight") quit, and started their own company, which went on to spawn more companies, and so on. There are many origin stories for Silicon Valley, but this is the point where they all converge. That same year, a movie called Forbidden Planet was released. It featured a machine that can turn thoughts into reality. This machine is your soundtrack.
MATERIALS: Rivets, aluminum, weatherstripping, fruit crate, burlap, constellations, mp3 player
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Dome install at Root Division
Dome in the wild (at California Academy of Sciences)
Evening Dome, photo credit: Betty Bigas
Dome interior