Fifteen Exercises for The Lightning Field

I once spent a long day wandering around in the middle of the New Mexico desert. The nearest town had a population of 200 people. It was twenty-five miles away, hidden behind a mesa: an hour’s drive on dirt desert roads.

Standing in the desert, I looked around to decide where to go next. I wasn’t looking for a specific place I could see — this anthill here, say, or that clump of saltbush over there — but an abstract place, a point in space, an intersection of imaginary lines. Mind made up, I set out across the desert, stepping clear of prairie dog holes, watching out for rattlesnakes. There was nothing to mark my destination. The usual navigation device (my phone) was in my pocket, but it had long since run out of battery, and in any case would have been useless for the kind of precision movement this desert demanded. I knew when I had arrived at my chosen destination, even without map or compass. The place told me. I didn't need a navigation instrument to hold in my hand because I was wandering around inside one.

I had come to the desert to visit Walter de Maria’s 1977 artwork The Lightning Field, a grid of 400 stainless steel poles set exactly 220 feet apart. The artwork stretches over almost two square kilometers, and I was inside it.

Whenever I drive on the highway or take a train across a flat and open landscape, some part of me is always on the lookout for power lines crossing my path, the kind that swoop across the landscape between tall pylons and stretch off into the distance on either side as far as the eye can see. Do you see it? There! Right up ahead — a row of towers, quickly approaching. As we zoom under the wires, I glance off to the side and see the pylons swing into alignment. For just a second, all the faraway pylons disappear, hidden behind the closest one.

On the highway, I’m on the lookout for lines of pylons because they don’t come along all that often. I don’t want to miss that satisfying snap as they come into alignment. In the Lightning Field, that satisfying snap happens every few steps. But it took a while for me to notice.

I spent my first few hours in the Field exploring: marveling at the size of the anthills, examining the stainless steel poles. I knew I was somewhere special, and I felt I should be doing something special in response, but I wasn’t sure what.

As I explored, I began to suspect that the simple grid of poles was merely the beginning of the Field, its most obvious aspect. As I paid less attention to individual poles, and more to the relationships between the poles, I started noticing the way they swung in and out of formation, tracing invisible lines through the grid, and the way the intersections of those invisible lines formed constellations of incorporeal points scattered across the desert.

It occurred to me that one "special" way to respond to the Lightning Field would be to let its geometry of invisible points and lines direct my movements. The exercises below list the ways I found to explore the Field’s geometry, and through it my own body’s sense of distance, scale, and orientation.

The visualization above simulates moving through the Field. The pace is fast — much faster than I could walk, or even run through the Field. It's more like that of the birds I saw swooping through the Field and occasionally perching on the tip of a pole. From any given position, each set of poles which come into alignment appears as a line on the map. Your position — usually just a patch of empty desert, occasionally a pole (see if you can find one!) — lies in the crosshair, the intersection of all the lines of alignment. Although the movement exercises are intended for the Field, you can play with many of them — simulate them — in the visualization.

Although I was never lost in the Field, I became disoriented more than once. Even within a single square within the Field’s grid, 220 feet on each side, the number of axes and intersections is dizzying.

Fifteen exercises

Points

1. A point is uniquely determined by the intersection of two non-parallel lines.

   Find the midpoint between two adjacent poles. You’ll need to look back and forth to align yourself roughly halfway between the two poles, and then look out to the diagonals and bring those diagonals into alignment.

   Look back and forth between the adjacent poles. Poles in the Field are 220 feet apart, so you are 110 feet from each pole. This is what a distance of roughly 100 feet looks like. Is it what you expected?

2. Using the same method, find the midpoint of a square. Once you’ve found it, you’ll be standing in the middle of a patch of desert equidistant from four poles.

3. If you want an extra challenge, find a point 1/3 of the way between two adjacent poles.

Midlines

1. Standing between two adjacent poles, orient yourself so that one pole is on your left and the other on your right. Ahead, you should see poles converging in the distance. Walk forward along the avenue formed by the two rows of poles on either side, tracing with your body the midline between the two rows. With your gaze forward, resting gently on the horizon or whatever you can see ahead in the desert beyond the Field, observe in your peripheral vision how the pattern of poles on either side of you changes as you move.

Circles

1. Stand a modest distance away from one pole, perhaps fifteen feet. Facing the pole, try to walk sideways in a circle, maintaining a constant distance from the pole.

   How can you tell when you’re on the right track?

   To challenge yourself, try increasing your distance from the pole.

2. Find the midpoint between two adjacent poles and stand there. Let your gaze rest on the horizon. Spin on the spot, sliding your gaze smoothly along the horizon. As you turn, without slowing or allowing your gaze to get stuck, notice when each of the two nearby poles spins past you.

3. Find the center of one square. Spin on the spot. As you turn, without slowing, notice when each of the four nearby poles spins past you.

   Spin faster. How fast do you have to spin to make all the poles disappear?

Gazes

1. Wander at random through the field with your gaze resting gently on the horizon. Keep your gaze soft, diffuse, and forward, and try to remain aware of the position and movement of as many poles as possible.

2. Wander at random through the field. Continually turn your head to check on the positions and alignment of all the poles around you. Let your gaze flick from pole to pole. See if you can identify which poles are about to come into alignment, and observe how it feels when a line of poles do come into alignment.

Paths

1. Walk through the Field with purpose, towards a destination somewhere within the Field. Choose your destination from the points you know how to reach: the midpoint between two poles, the center of a square, etc. When you reach a destination, look around, pick a new one, and keep walking.

2. Walk with no destination in mind along the paths you know: down an avenue with poles flanking you on either side; around the perimeter of a circle centered on a nearby pole. When you see an appealing opening to switch onto a different path, take it.

3. Wander the Field: sometimes towards an invisible point, sometimes along an invisible line or circle, sometimes tracing the bare soil between the scrub and grasses, but always with an awareness of how you’re walking.

Lines

1. Stand just outside the Field, facing a pole from a distance of about fifteen feet, or as far as you need to stand so you can focus on the nearest pole without going cross-eyed. Shift your feet to align a line of poles. Close one eye at a time and make sure that with each eye closed, the line of poles is completely hidden between the closest pole (if you can see any poles with either eye, step back further until they’re all hidden behind the closest pole). Next, turn around to face away from the line of poles. Take ten steps in this direction, then turn back to face the Field. Is the line of poles still perfectly aligned? If not, how many steps (parallel to the edge of the Field) do you have to take in order to realign the poles?

   Return to your original starting point and try again (it’s important to return to the same spot in order to be able to observe your progress across attempts).

   If you find this difficult, try turning so your body is parallel to the edge of the Field, then holding your arms up and out along the line of poles. Turn your hands so your palms face out, and lift them so when you close one eye and turn your head to the side, your index finger is just at the horizon line. Look back towards the Field and make sure your palm is perfectly aligned with the poles, then turn your head away from the field and note which point on the horizon your hand is pointing to. Relax your arms, turn, and without looking back at the Field, walk ten steps towards that point on the horizon.

   Where you end up in relation to the Field will tell you how you need to adjust your outstretched arms for the next attempt so that they form a straight line with the poles.

2. The same as the previous exercise, but instead of walking straight through the desert away from the Field (potentially stepping or jumping over bushes, anthills, scat, etc), take a meandering path. Without looking back, follow the desert away from the Field, trying to keep your feet on the dirt as much as possible. Step around rather than over plants. Stop when you believe you are about ten paces away in a straight line from your focal pole.

   Repeat.

3. As before, wander the Field — but now, when you reach the edge of the Field, walk out of it for as long as you like. When you’re ready, turn back, find a new path or pick a new point, and re-enter.