ETC: Three Things I Learned About Excavators This Weekend

1. Excavators are useful.
The Caterpillar 345B Demolition Excavator can "dig with its bucket, break up asphalt or cement with a hydraulic hammer attachment, and lift large blocks of material with a cable attachment. The body of an excavator can swing 360 degrees around, and the tracks can carry it over tough, uneven ground, making this an especially versatile, powerful machine." (From Big Trucks and Diggers in 3D by Mark Blum.)

2. Excavators are beautiful.
This is actually just the scale model created for this stunning installation, entitled "Gothic", both by artist Wim Delvoye. According to the write-up in this book (which I recommend, by the way):

The exaggeratedly decorative structural forms of the diggers, with their quatrefoil perforations, finial-topped arches, and lacy rosettes, confounded their essential ordinariness; with their unmistakeable overtones of church architecture, these emphatically secular apparatuses were somehow made to seem almost sacred.

Funny, that's exactly what I was going to say.

Every time I see an installation like this, it automatically begs the question: Why does all the most amazing public art happen in other cities, while we just get those damned Spirit Bears? And Vancouver can't get all crybabyish and whine, "Well, of course that's a cool piece of art. It's in New York CITY," because this next piece is from Newfoundland, and it fucking rocks. (Pardon the pun, Newfoundland friends.)

3. Excavators dance better than your prom date.
Two words: In. Credible.