TRAPPING TIME

architect I.M. Pei’s 1962 iconic air traffic control tower. The inspiration came from the individuals and their expertise who utilized the tower, every day, from 1969 to 1996, before it was “decommissioned” in favor of a new and taller design. Trapping Time celebrated the connective thread between the ancient celestial cartographers and our present-day “state of the art” means for guiding safe and secure travel.

The ancients used the night sky and north star as a reference to navigate and explore. We, in the 21st century, continue this tradition.

Globally, airport runways are numbered 1-36. These numbers are shortened versions of degrees on a compass which indicate the direction the runway is facing in relation to true north. For example:

Runway 33 faces 330 degrees north northwest

or

Runway 15 faces 150 degrees south southeast

The installation, viewed only from the ground and at night, visually and conceptually paired poetic representations of navigation with contemporary pragmatic practices.

Images were drawn from a 1660 astronomical atlas, enlarged and printed onto translucent films. Glowing from the interior windows of the tower cab, seventeenth century fantastical animals, gods and goddesses’ rode the sky. The five directional compositions incorporated a sampling of the stars and constellations that can be seen from IAH’s runways 33, 15, 27, 9 and 8 during a 24-hour period on June 8, 2019. This date marked the 50th anniversary of the official opening of the airport in 1969.

Paired to each celestial face were graphic images using the “airport” typeface. Each number and degrees identified the runway at IAH, the direction it faces, and the time of day when the constellations can be seen in that part of the sky. The typeface was designed to be simple, readable from high above, and easy to replicate. Used globally, it became the universal cooperative language of air travel professionals.

-Jo Ann Fleischhauer 2018