'Who's on First' lights up downtown San Jose

By Maggie Beidelman

For Santa Clara alumnus Chris Eckert, dreams became reality in the form of haiku.

The mechanical engineer-turned-artist co-created "Light Haiku," one piece of downtown San Jose's current "Who's on First, What's on Second" outdoor public art exhibition.

The entire exhibition features eight different multimedia art projects -- including mechanical and sound sculpture -- on temporary outdoor display between downtown's First and Second streets and between St. James Park and San Carlos Street.

The aim of the public project is to liven up the downtown area and introduce residents to its unique sounds and art.

Eckert, of the undergraduate class of 1991, also got his master's degree in mechanical engineering from Santa Clara in 1993. He worked as a design engineer in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade before putting his skills to a different use by designing automated sculpture.

Eckert's piece combines the sophistication of engineering and the art of Japanese poetry.

A computer-controlled spotlight projects haiku, written with light, on a parking lot wall across the street from Gordon Biersch restaurant at San Fernando and Second Street.

"I'd always been interested in art," said Eckert. After 10 years in the mechanical engineering business, "I started realizing that it wasn't quite right for me."

Eckert decided to go back to school, getting his Master of Fine Art at San Jose State University in 2003.

Now working full-time as a sculptor, Eckert says he is lucky to be able to do what he loves and live comfortably in San Jose. Sculpture actually isn't drastically different from the automation of mechanical engineering, Eckert said.

" 'Light Haiku' was very much a piece of automation that I built."

Eckert was one of several San Jose artists nominated to do a proposal of public art for the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs.

"The interesting thing about public art is, how can you make something that no one can destroy?" said Eckert.

It took him a year to create the one-story-high box mounted to a pole, which houses the spotlight he calls his "light cannon."

The haiku itself was written by San Jose grade school students and one of Eckert's colleagues, recording artist and poet pc muñoz of San Francisco, a graduate of the University of San Francisco.

"It's weird -- I spent a year on it, and yet if I did it right, nobody even knows it's there," Eckert said of his light cannon.

Eckert's spotlight allows passersby to contemplate the different haiku, such as pc muñoz's, "Surreal stillness / Anticipatory vibes / Something big coming."

"Light Haiku" is on display from 7 p.m. until 2:30 a.m. nightly. It runs until Feb. 15.

Eckert, who is always doing several projects simultaneously, is also working on mechanical sculptures, such as an automatic typewriter that writes and corrects the politically incorrect phrase that was formerly used to test typing speed and accuracy: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."

Eckert encourages college students to follow their passion in life. He stressed the need to like what you do for work. For Eckert, as an artist, this means learning "to see the potential in things."

Even if that thing is as simple as a parking lot wall.

Contact Maggie Beidelman at (408) 551-1918 or mbeidelman@scu.edu.