Monument could be any building or sculpture that can define the area. They could be a tool to remember the notable past or a person, or according to Smithson, it could be a structure that shows progress of a major activity that grounded the place. Smithson includes pipelines and residue of a construction place as monuments. A "pumping derrick with a long pipe attached to it"(p.71) was one monument he found, and this one was continuously flowing water and debris inside it. Smithson compared this as human's sexual activity. He visualizes these things to humans or animistic activities and find the relevance between the landscape and the dwellers. So pipelines are the reflection of a human activity, the thing to remind humans that the land is the same living thing as humans.
Smithson noted, "the suburbs exist without a rational past and without the "big events" of history"(p.72). Monuments don't have to serve as separate beings that only relate to human's past; they could also be links that accentuate the resemblance of landscape to humans, and commemorate the land itself as the place where the dwellers live in. Smithson said, "The future is lost somewhere in the dumps of the non-historical past; it is in... the false mirror of our rejected dreams." (p.74) The non-historical past is where we have to look to find our future, and that is the process of developing the area- where humans and nature had interactions, and worked together find each other a purpose for being in the area. In the process of defining its future, we are side-tracked and forget that our rejected dream is the "living" part. After all, monuments are constructed to define the area as a historically distinguished place from the rest. The fact that we are living in the area could define the place with historical importance. So monuments such as the pipelines could be used to celebrate cultivating the land and living in it.
Pipes: Inorganic objects mimicking organic beings and occupying their space. -> entropy- movement for chaos
1. On page 72 Smithson states, "Passaic seems full of "holes" compared to New York City, which seems tightly packed and solid, and those holes... are the monumental vacancies that define... the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures." How could monuments could successfully define "the abandoned set of futures"? If there was a "hole" in Brooklyn, which aspect of the city would we look at to construct a monument for the Brooklyn hole?
2. What are some similar ways Smithson and Gibson view of undeveloped land?
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