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The S.S. Palo Alto Project was a proposal for a new public ArtPark focusing on the sustainability of the ocean environment. Located off of Seacliff State Beach on the West Coast of the U.S., it was one of the first cement ships built for the WWI military efforts. Now, it has the potential to become a rallying symbol for the precarious future of California's State Parks, and the health of the world's oceans.

The S.S. Palo Alto ArtPark is proposed as an aesthetically enhanced public space on the California coast, engaging transformative education, inspiring environmental awareness and promoting ocean sustainability.

Joining Art and Science, we hope to set a precedent in social responsibility and ocean advocacy worldwide by uniting all 28 internationally renowned marine institutes and labs of the Monterey Bay for the first time. As a conceptual project, students and artists are challenged to research new processes to engage the public in creative change. Dialoging with California's State Parks, our “catalogue of ideas” offers sustainable solutions to a precarious economic and environmental situation. It is a symbolic place to visually bring together our private and public selves.

Located off of Seacliff State Beach on the West Coast of the U.S., the park is already an eco-friendly attraction to four million annual visitors, and the sinking WWI military ship, a magnet. Focusing on sustaining the unique marine life of the surrounding Monterey Bay, with the beloved 'Cement Ship', as it is locally referred to, will provide an educational, recreational, and artistic platform for students and researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, spearheaded by our association with the Social Practice Arts Research Center. The 400 foot long pier leading to the slowly sinking Ship , which is now becoming a new reef, will be filled with imaginative kinetic and solar sculptures, installations, and interactive modules of information. All artworks are completely safe and non-obtrusive to the delicate balance of the surrounding eco-system, and are made with natural, biodegradable materials or otherwise non-toxic systems.

Short FILM by Eric Thiermann of IMPACT

SS Palo Alto Video

Short FILM by Nomi Talisman SS Palo Alto (7:40)

Barbara Benish, Project Organizer ArtMill/Art Dialogue, barbara@artmill.eu

United Nations Safe Planet Campaign

Contact: Michael S. Jones, msjones@pops.int

Social Public Arts Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz Co-Founder: Dee Hibbert-Jones, dhibbert-jones@ucsc.edu

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