ABOUT SEE MONSTER
SEE MONSTER is a retired rig from the North Sea, reimagined in Weston-super-Mare to celebrate the great British weather from this iconic seaside town.
SEE MONSTER is brought to
life by Leeds-based creative studio NEWSUBSTANCE and supported by North Somerset Council.
Voyaging from the far reaches of the North Sea, SEE MONSTER will endure blustery winds and roaring waves as it encircles the UK coast in search for a new home. After a lifetime weathering the stormy seas, the retired rig will be reborn at shore in the former 1930s lido, the Tropicana. Audiences from far and wide will flock to the beach to welcome SEE MONSTER, the wild beast that has never been seen before…
By the Summer of 2022, having been transformed along its journey, the weather-beaten Monster will come alive in Weston-super-Mare, as a colossal manifestation of all it has witnessed along its journey around the turbulent coast. The reawakened entity will be a joyous celebration of the great British weather and British eccentricity, presenting a new life for what the Monster could become. As a pioneer towards a greener future, SEE MONSTER will explore the concept of inherited structures, be those physical, social, or environmental. What do we do with the structures we inherit? And what actions can they inspire?
As a creation of new from old, the regeneration of the rig, transformed from its former life, will champion the role of re-use and creativity within our future.
SEE MONSTER is part of UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK. A once-in-a-lifetime celebration of creativity, taking place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and online from March to October 2022.
ABOUT LAND ART GENERATOR
The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) helps design renewable energy infrastructures that are also beautiful places for people.
With a mission to advance a just and equitable energy transition in response to the climate crisis, the Land Art Generator initiative (LAGI) helps design public places that share land use with distributed renewable energy generation. Works of art in civic space distribute clean energy and provide other sustainable services to buildings and the utility grid while beautifying the built environment.
Land Art Generator educational programming is a great example of STEM to STEAM and project-based learning. Through the process of designing their own land art generator, students show applied understanding of concepts like energy conversion efficiency, capacity factor, and become familiar with using kilowatt-hours. At the same time they are applying knowledge of form, shape, colour, and touching on aspects of urban planning and whole systems design. These are exactly the kind of skills that researchers tell us will be important for jobs in the twenty-first century.
The Land Art Generator nonprofit organization provides context-specific and culturally-relevant design solutions for distributed clean energy that reflect the needs of local communities. We do this through design competitions, direct commissions, calls for proposals, Solar Mural artworks, and participatory co-design projects for people of all ages. International open-call competitions for Dubai & Abu Dhabi (2010), New York City (2012), Copenhagen (2014), Santa Monica (2016), Melbourne (2018), Abu Dhabi (2019), and Fly Ranch (2020) have resulted in over 1,400 designs from creative teams across more than eighty countries.
