FORE CAST

THE EXPANDABLE DESERT

(a project set to take place)

A desertified environment will occupy the entire space, visually mimicking and sensorially feeling like a drought. The Red Coats Are Coming, along with Mary Mattingly, will design an operatic sound piece loosely based on the story of the Tower of Babel with a futuristic and predictive proclivity. The objective, purpose, and essence of this project is to transform the totality of the entire space into a sufficiently plausible desert environment and experience in order to draw attention to the risks to the planet and to civilization arising from increasing desertification of the globe. The sensorial clues and interactive foundation will create a realistic labyrinthine time warp.

History of Babel:
Beginning some 3,500 years b.c., the Sumerians, Acadians, Assyrians and Babylonians began to experiment with writing, mathematics, the wheel, architecture, astronomy, money, irrigation and the benefits of laws. In different periods, city-states flourished, and of course, for thousands of years it has been the scenario for war. Legendary heroes like Gilgamesh, mythic events like the flood and the loss of languages in the Tower of Babel were set in ancient Mesopotamia; currently Iraq.
The story of the Tower of Babel mocks the great urban culture of Babylon rising out of the Tigris and Euphrates flood plains, plains that were disastrously over-irrigated and caused the constant northward migration of the Mesopotamian civilization. The story shows people as they take their eyes off the ground and build a tower "with its head in the heavens." "The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he gave to human beings," says Psalm 115:16. Forgetting their own earthly domain, the Babylonians laid it waste. The story of The Tower of Babel today manifests itself less in the usual definition of religion and more in the importance that economics play, thus the secondary attention paid to everything else including land. The Tower of Babel also refers to utopic visions and fascinating feats of technology that present us with livable communities like Las Vegas and Dubai.

Desertification and drought leave in their wake severe economic, environmental and socio-political troubles around the world. Every year, fifteen million acres of productive land disappear and, perhaps ironically, millions of dollars in income are lost due to land degradation and declining agricultural yields.

Contrary to popular belief, droughts are not the primary cause of desertification. The main cause of the spread of deserts is long term, poor management of marginal lands. Due to a combination of bad land management and a drought that began in 1968, the desertification of the Sahel region of west Africa led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people and 12 million cattle. The Sahel is the transition zone between the Sahara and the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. Its desertification has created a large expansion of the Sahara. Desertification has been defined as a phenomenon of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid dry areas arising from the negative effects of human activities and climate change.

The largest hot deserts in the world are, in order: the Sahara, Gobi, Patagonia, Rub' al Khali, Great Sandy, Great Victoria, Chihuahuan, Takla Makan, Sonoran, Kalahari, Kyzyl Kum, Thar, Simpson, and the Mohave deserts.

Tower of Babel