Deciphering Altered Landscapes

The Nevada Test Site is one of Matt Coolidge's favorite spots on earth. "It's full of stories and mystery," says the founder of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a nonprofit art and research center in Culver City, Calif.

The center has published The Nevada Test Site: A Guide to America's Proving Ground ($12.50), which provides more information about what's gone on there than volumes of official documents.

The book is just one of the center's projects to compile databases and guidebooks and a Web site on "human-induced altered landscapes," such as the nuclear test site, secret bases in Nevada, the industrialized outback of Utah's West Desert, and the urbanized southern California desert countryside along Highway 58.

Coolidge wants to draw people into a landscape they might otherwise ignore or disdain. His heroes are artists, such as photographer Richard Misrach, whose "Desert Cantos" explore bombing ranges and dumping grounds of the West, and sculptor Robert Smithson, whose earthworks such as Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake call attention to the ways people have worked over the earth.

The center has opened an exhibit at the abandoned Wendover Air Force Base, off I-80 on the Utah-Nevada border, which includes some of this work and uncovers the history of the base,where the Enola Gay was outfitted before dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Coolidge calls his work "anthropogeomorphology," the study of how humans shape the land. "The earth is like a machine we've built to maintain our lifestyle," he says. "Dirt is just the matrix that holds roads, conduits and pipelines."

He applauds the Energy Department's plans to open the Nevada Test Site to tourism. "Once these stories are told," he says, "people can see the cost of the Cold War and militarism and perhaps begin to make better judgements about the value of this way of life."

But Coolidge doesn't want to beat anybody over the head with a message. He prefers a mystery, revealed at your own pace. He hopes people will just stumble upon the new exhibit by following the signs in Wendover.

"Mystery draws people in," says Coolidge. "They begin to wonder what else is out there. They look at it not just as remote desert but as a place where transformations go on."

Connect to the Center for Land Use Interpretation: www.clui.org.

"So-called "Nuclear Plant" Late 20th Century, Early 21st century
Typical ruin dating from the "Technocratic Dynasty" (known for its functional style)
This type of installation exemplied the arrogance of this epoch, which was as dominating as it was short.

Cartoon by Jean Francois Batellier/Processed World