Tell me whats next, puppy's big FLEX??

Somewhere in the West

Continuing my month long series of posts with images made in New Mexico with the Great Divide as my focus or jumping off point: this is the Very Large Array, twenty-two miles west of Magdalena (and not terribly far from the Divide).

The Array is comprised of 27 operating dishes which are spread out in three directions across the Plains of San Agustin. A corresponding double track railroad runs alongside; the tracks are used by a special device that can lift one of the monstrous dishes (82 feet in diameter), along with its stand, and haul it back and forth, to and from, a huge shop building for servicing. There are 28 dishes total, with one always in the shop. For a sense of scale, note the size of the pickup truck below.

It's intriguing to watch as all the dishes move in unison to point this direction or that. I timed my visit at the end of day thinking I could shoot while the sun set, and a fine New Mexican sunset it was.

The Artemis II mission was happening at that time, and I wondered if it might be involved with that, but know not. The Array was featured in the 1997 film, Contact, but I think it's more about researching quasars and the like rather than listening for intelligent life, but I could be wrong. Go here to read more about this fascinating research site.

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

Benjamin J. Shamback (American, b. 1974)

Day Lily Bouquet in Footed Glass, 2016

oh, it was a lonely lonely winter