“The Color of Palo Alto” is a temporary public art installation commissioned by the City of Palo Alto Public Art Commission for the Civic Center Plaza at 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California, USA.

The Public Art Commission invited four different artists to temporarily place a sculpture in the plaza, and Samuel Yates was the fourth and final artist in the series.

Instead of placing a sculpture in the plaza that would sit inactive, Yates placed a “portable solar garage” in the plaza as his “sculpture,” and used it as his office and headquarters during a twelve-month search for “The Color of Palo Alto” in 2005.

METHOD

The artist began his search for “The Color of Palo Alto” by photographing every parcel of land in Palo Alto with a digital camera, seven days per week, Sunday thru Saturday, totaling 48 or 49 new parcels per day. The photographs were taken alphabetically from the "A" streets through the "Z" streets from January to December.

Meanwhile, the photographs were tracked with a GPS, digital compass, and laser distance meter-a system designed in 2002 by Gloria Humble, Kelly Fergusson, PhD, and Samuel Yates-to tie them into the City of Palo Alto Geographic Information System (GIS). The City of Palo Alto GIS was written by Chip Eitzel and Jean-Paul Lavoie at Geodesy, San Francisco, and managed by Dave Matson and John Thayer at the City of Palo Alto.

Furthermore, the artist Eli Schleifer wrote a software program for the project to calculate various color traits about each digital photograph, including numerous average pixel colors (mean, median, mode, HSL, gaussian, etc.); the unique pixel color (which pixel the photo contains that no other photo contains); the cream-of-the-crop (top row of pixels); and center square (center four pixels), etc.

In a democratic manner, each parcel in the city will contribute one “vote” of "average mean color" toward the final color of Palo Alto.

The average color of all 17,729 photographs will then become a paint color, pixel color, clothing color, etc. to be referred to as “The Color of Palo Alto.”

The color palettes for each of these traits can be used to create patterns such as stripes, polka dots, and plaids, e.g. a plaid tartan for each street and neighborhood in Palo Alto. Various permutations of these patterns will be displayed on the upcoming, new website.

DATA

PAINT COLOR

Any person will be able visit a hardware store, such as Palo Alto Hardware, and have any color from the project mixed as a paint color, especially the paint color “Palo Alto.”

The paint colors will have names like “Professorville,” “Whitman Court,” and “242 Melville Avenue,” depending upon whether they are the colors of a particular neighborhood, street, or parcel.

If someone painted their dining room wall “Melville Avenue,” for example, not only would the color reference the author Herman Melville, and his literary works such as “Moby Dick” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” it would also reference the fact that every house on Melville Avenue had been photographed and averaged to define the color known as “Melville Avenue.” Additionally, the color is an intrinsic symbol of sustainability, discovered using renewable energy from a portable solar garage in the Civic Center Plaza, described below.

The new website will be engineered by artist Eli Schleifer and contain illustrations by artist Jen Corace. There will be a special section devoted to the software and database Schleifer developed for the project, including the strategy used to find the final color of Palo Alto.

PIXEL COLOR

Any of the average colors of Palo Alto will be made available for use in any software or word processing application. They can also be printed on any color printer.

For example, a student writing an essay on Walt Whitman might begin their work by changing their font color to “Whitman Court.”

NATIONWIDE PAINTING

After “The Color of Palo Alto” is discovered and made available online, any person will be able to use any of the colors to paint an object (such as a wall, a door, a bench, or a bicycle), take a photo of that painted object, and post that photo online.

The geographic location of these smaller paintings will be indicated by a dot on an online map of the United States.

Together, each of these dots, which indicate the location of each of these smaller paintings by different people in different places, will represent individual brushstrokes on a continent-wide canvas, creating a giant-abstract-monochromatic-pointillist painting, to which anyone can contribute.

Furthermore, if someone travels to another state, or another country, we will encourage them to take a little “Palo Alto” paint with them to increase the breadth and depth of this large-scale painting.

To jumpstart this large-scale painting, one strategy may be to mail one can of "Palo Alto" paint and two disposable cameras to one elementary school art teacher in each of the 50 states. The art teacher could then put the paint can in the middle of the room and have students paint something with the color. The art teacher could then photograph all of the painted items with the disposable cameras and then mail the cameras back to the artist. The photographs of the artworks would then be posted on the new website. Instantly, all 50 states would be represented on this larger canvas. Alternatively, local classes could establish sister classrooms in other states, with pen pal painters, to expand this larger artwork.

Note: In 2001 this strategy of using disposible cameras seemed necessary given the lack of disposable cameras in the marketplace. Since that time, especially since the Christmas season of 2003, digital cameras, camera phones, online posting of photos, and geotagging (called “geocoding” at that time) have become ubiquitous, making direct posting of digital photos from classrooms more practicable. Also, a photo could simply be taken of a computer screen showing the color, without using paint at all, and the concept could be fulfilled, i.e. "The Color of Palo Alto" had spread to that town.

CITY HALL FAÇADE - CONCEPT

In the end, Yates would like to print out all 22,339 photos of Palo Alto (17,729 of which are used to calculate the city color) and cover the entire City Hall façade with them, on a printed adhesive material, for six months.

If a passerby squinted their eyes they would, generally speaking, see “The Color of Palo Alto” on the façade.

The artist would also like to set up a platform with a telescope and index for any passerby to find the photo of their house or business on the façade.

The photographs will be organized on the building alphabetically by street, beginning with “A” streets on the top left and ending with “Z” streets on the bottom right.

Because the photographs were taken alphabetically by street, A to Z, during the year, the alphabetical order of streets on the façade will also be the chronological order of days in Palo Alto in the year 2005.

The viewer will be able to see the city alphabetically and seasonally, simultaneously.

City Hall represents the City and the entire City would be represented on City Hall for anyone in the public to view their contribution to the final color and check to make sure their vote is counted properly (that it is in the proper location on their street).

CITY HALL FAÇADE - METHOD

The photos will be printed on a perforated adhesive vinyl commonly used to cover the sides and windows of buses with advertisements.

The material enables passengers inside a bus to see out the windows, while viewers outside the same bus see only the printed image on the outside of the windows (without seeing through the windows into the bus).

256 panels measuring roughly 3 ft. wide by 7 ft. tall will be printed with roughly 84 photos at 4.5 in. x 6 in. each; there would be one panel for each window on the City Hall façade.

When removed after six months, all 256 window strips will be combined on a single roll and stowed inside a 2 ft. x 2 ft. x 3 ft. box as a time capsule of the entire City of Palo Alto in the year 2005.

GREEN GARAGE

The "portable solar garage" in the plaza was built from salvaged building materials and it used renewable energy to power the equipment and electric vehicle used to find "The Color of Palo Alto."

Specifically, the garage sent clean solar energy into the power grid during the daytime and it received clean windmill energy from the power grid during the nighttime.

As a result, the electric meter on the garage ran backward during the daytime and forward during the nighttime, often eliminating energy bill charges.

In this way, the zero-emission electric scooter inside the garage was charged with zero-emission energy from the garage for Yates to travel around the city taking pictures every day.

As a result, when complete, "The Color of Palo Alto" will be emblematic of these sustainable methodologies as it promotes four city-sponsored environmental initiatives: Photovoltaic Partners, Palo Alto Green, Salvage Building Materials & Recycling, and Alternative Transportation.

That is to say, in the same way a pink ribbon is symbolic of breast cancer awareness, "The Color of Palo Alto" can be symbolic of environmental awareness as it actually uses these environmentally aware strategies to discover the color, expanding the "public" nature of the project.

GARAGE INVENTORS

The “portable solar garage” in the Civic Center Plaza celebrates Palo Alto’s history of “garage inventors” as the place where “The Color of Palo Alto” will be discovered.

Palo Alto is known as "The Birthplace of Silicon Valley" because of William Hewlett and David Packard. They were graduate students at Stanford University and founded their company in a one-car garage several blocks away from the present-day Plaza.

"The Color of Palo Alto" remains loyal to this hometown company by using all Hewlett-Packard computer equipment inside the "portable solar garage", as well as an HP digital camera in the field as the lens through which the color is discovered.

The iconography of the "portable solar garage" in the Plaza also relates to a story about Frederick Terman, a Stanford professor who encouraged his students to stay on the West coast and start companies rather than move back East to join established firms. Apparently, Hewlett and Packard followed his advice and hence began their company in Palo Alto after graduating.

When Terman would drive by the HP garage, if the car was parked outside the garage, in the driveway, that was a good sign because it meant business was cooking inside the garage. If the car was parked inside the garage, however, that was a bad sign because it meant business was slow.

A similar iconography emerged with the "portable solar garage" in the Civic Center Plaza. If the electric scooter was seen out on the ramp in the Plaza, the artist was around City Hall or working inside the garage. If the scooter was gone, then the artist was out in the field taking photographs. And if the scooter was inside the garage, the artist had likely packed-up for the night.

In addition to these visual clues for visitors to the Plaza, the address numbers on the outside of the garage, above the roll-up door, were changed every night to reflect how many parcels in Palo Alto had been photographed to-date. The exterior numbers enabled visitors to casually track the progress of the project.

LUNAR MODULE

The “portable solar garage” was influenced by the Apollo 11 lunar module aesthetic. It attempts to highlight the structure as a portable laboratory that has landed in the plaza, unfurled its solar panels and outriggers, is conducting an experiment to find “The Color of Palo Alto,” and will then take off again.

The weather station on the starboard bow highlights the garage's role as a field station for this yearlong empirical study of the city.

The garage was designed to fold-up (solar wings down, outriggers and ramp up), so that the structure can be shipped by truck to art galleries, and so that it can be disassembled to fit through any door.

GPS TRACKING

The artist used a GPS unit, digital compass, and laser distance meter to track the location where each photo was taken, the direction the camera was pointing, and the distance to each building when the photo was taken.

In this way, each photo was accurately attached to its corresponding parcel in the city’s online database of parcels, known as the GIS (Geographic Information System).

The artist precisely tracked each photograph to ensure that every parcel of land had been photographed and had therefore contributed one “vote” of color toward the final color of Palo Alto.

PUBLIC SAFETY

The GIS allows the digital photos to be used by city planners, fire and police personnel, and other city employees at the click of a mouse.

For example, when someone calls 911 in the future, the caller-ID will automatically retrieve a photo from the GIS of the parcel that is calling for help. In this way, the 911 operator may be able to understand the situation more fully and empathize with the caller more effectively.

The photographs may also reduce response times by helping safety personnel to find a location, strategize about a particular situation on the way to a scene, and see structural elements in a daytime photo that may not be visible at night or during a fire.

If the photographs can help reduce a response time by just a few seconds, it could have a profound impact on public safety, increasing the "public" nature of the project.

Accordingly, this 911 system was created in May 2003 and shown to the larger GIS community in February 2004 at the California GIS Conference in San Jose, California.

HISTORICAL RECORD

The 17,729 photographs of Palo Alto, which can fit on a single DVD, will become a historical document of the city in the year 2005 for the Palo Alto Historical Association.

A set of photographs of every parcel in Palo Alto from the year 1905 would be extremely useful to historians today. As a result of "The Color of Palo Alto," that same type of historical resource for the year 2005 will now be available for historians 100 years from today.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Every photo of the city can fit on a single DVD that can be shipped to the five sister cities of Palo Alto in five foreign countries: France, Mexico, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Philippines.

The City of Palo Alto can be shown as a video projection, one house after the next, as a cultural exchange that shares the whole of Palo Alto with its neighbors abroad.

AWARDS

"The Color of Palo Alto" received the "Best Art Project in the Bay Area" award from San Francisco Magazine in July 2004. The project also received the "Nice Modernist" award from Dwell Magazine for March 2005, in recognition of its larger social mission and effect.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Samuel Yates was born in Sacramento, CA in 1974. He received his BA in English from UC Berkeley in 1997, and his MFA in Visual Arts with Honors from Columbia University in 2002. He was a Joan Sovern Sculpture Award recipient, M Roche Scholarship recipient, and Department Fellow at Columbia. He was a SECA 2000 Award Finalist at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). In addition to private art collections, his artwork is included in public collections such as SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Museum, di Rosa Preserve (Napa, CA), and Ballett Frankfurt (Frankfurt, Germany). His 2001 sculpture, Untitled, was named by Guinness World Records as the “tallest file cabinet on earth,” and a short 30-minute documentary was made about his painting, “Vern,” in the SFMOMA permanent collection. He has exhibited in America and Europe and his work has been written about in over 40 US and European publications. He has presented to gallery, museum, art school, university, private, and industry audiences, including the California GIS Conference.

“The Color of Palo Alto” is a public art project commissioned by the City of Palo Alto. It will travel to New York for exhibition.

CONTACT

Samuel Yates
The Color of Palo Alto
550 S. California Ave #320
Palo Alto, CA 94306
510-967-4017
samuelyates@thecolorofpaloalto.com

CALIFORNIA GIS CONFERENCE ABSTRACT

"The Color of Palo Alto"
Art Meets GIS

A fine artist combines GPS technology, a digital compass, a laser distance meter, a digital camera, and GIS software in an Art Commission-sponsored project to photograph and geocode each of the city's 20,000 structures. The artist seeks to find the average pixel color of the city and hence “The Color of Palo Alto,” to be used as a paint color and font color afterward.

See his one-of-a-kind equipment rig; preview a website that tracks the artist's daily progress along each street; and hear about the technical challenges and benefits of integrating these photos and diverse data sources into the City of Palo Alto GIS.

With several high profile and critically acclaimed projects already to his credit, Samuel Yates won a competitive grant to embark on a unique and technically challenging project combining art and GIS technology.

Yates uses a GPS unit to gather an initial position, a digital compass to record his orientation, a laser meter to measure the distance to his target, and a digital camera to record the visual image. Several hundred data points are gathered in an average day. Back in the office, the GPS data is post-processed with base station satellite data to achieve sub-meter spatial accuracy. Queries combine data records from the laser meter, camera and differentially-corrected GPS into a single relational database table of camera positions. Software algorithms calculate the target position inside of each property parcel, and, from each photo, the average color of the parcel. Each day produces a thematic map showing the average color of the photographed property parcels.

Ultimately, Yates will calculate the average color for the entire city and make the paint color "Palo Alto" available to be mixed at any hardware store (and the pixel color available to be printed from any computer). The website will display artifacts from around the world utilizing the paint and ink color.

The Palo Alto GIS will benefit by having a photo of every structure available at the click of a mouse. The methodology and equipment setup can be applied to developing an inventory of a wide variety of other city assets.

[The artist has built a “portable solar garage” in the Civic Center Plaza to use as his office and headquarters. The solar garage charges the field equipment and electric scooter he uses to travel around the city each day. The solar garage also celebrates Palo Alto’s history of garage inventors while promoting four of the City's environmental initiatives: Photovoltaic Partners; Palo Alto Green; Recycling; and Alternative Transportation.]

TALKS, PRESENTATIONS, & LECTURES on THE COLOR OF PALO ALTO

2008
California College of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Oakland, CA

2007
California College of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, Oakland, CA
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
Southern Utah University, Department of Art, Cedar City, UT

2006
California College of the Arts, Department of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA
Canopy, Palo Alto, CA
City of Palo Alto, City Council, Palo Alto, CA
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Department of Art, Tallahassee, FL
IDEO, Palo Alto, CA
San Francisco Art Institute, New Genres, San Francisco, CA
Santa Clara University, Department of Environmental Studies, Santa Clara, CA
Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, Stanford, CA
University of Central Florida, Department of Art, Orlando, FL
University of Georgia, Department of Art, Athens, GA
University of Southern California, Department of Public Art, Los Angeles, CA

2005
City of Palo Alto, Mayor & Chamber of Commerce Liaison, Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto Art Center, City Hall, Palo Alto, CA
San Francisco Art Institute, New Genres, San Francisco, CA
Silicon Valley Association of Realtors, Palo Alto, CA
Society for Photography Education, Southeastern Conference, Tallahassee, FL
The di Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA

2004
California GIS (Geographic Information System) Conference, San Jose, CA
City of Palo Alto, Art Day, Civic Center Plaza, Palo Alto, CA
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA

2003
Business Network International, Palo Alto, CA
City of Palo Alto, Assistant City Manager & Executive Staff, Palo Alto, CA
City of Palo Alto, Planning Division, Palo Alto, CA
City of Palo Alto, Utilities, Transportation, & Recycling, Palo Alto, CA
Silicon Valley Electric Auto Association, Palo Alto, CA
University of Nevada, Reno, Department of Art, Reno, NV

2002
The Oxbow School, Napa, CA

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: Won't the color be grey or brown?

A: Maybe. We'll see in the final math. The dominant colors in the city are blue for sky, green for trees and grass, brown for limbs and trunks, and grey for sidewalks and driveways. We'll hope that blue and green remain the dominant colors because when you average blue and green you get blue-green, not grey or brown. We'll have to wait and see.

Q: How do you find the average color?

A: Eli Schleifer will explain it better in Version 1.0 of the website, but basically every pixel in a JPEG has a red, green, and blue value on a scale from 0 to 255. Schleifer adds up all the red values of all the pixels in the JPEG and divides by the number of pixels to get the average red value of the entire JPEG. He then repeats the process for the green and blue pixels so that you have the average red, green, and blue values of the JPEG. It's straight math. The mean average. However, we will have various additional averages, as well as the unique colors" within each photo.

As proof of concept, Schleifer took the average color of each horizontal row of pixels in a JPEG and found its average color. Then he changed that entire row of pixels into its average color. Sure enough, there was a bluish blur where the sky was, a greenish blur where the trees were, a pinkish blur where the house was, and a greyish blur where the sidewalk and street were.

Q: How can we track your progress?

A: If you are near the Civic Center Plaza, I change the address numbers above the roll-up door on the portable solar garage to reflect the current number of parcels photographed. My progress is then tracked as the numbers advance above the door.

Q: Why did you pick Palo Alto?

A: I was invited by the former Chair of the Public Art Commission, David Levin, at an opening of mine at the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, CA, to make a proposal for the temporary installation series in the Civic Center Plaza. The Commission accepted my initial proposal in November 2001, and then my final proposal for "The Color of Palo Alto" in February 2002. I was still in graduate school at Columbia University in New York at the time. A few months later, after I graduated with my MFA, I came out to California to complete the project.

Q: What was the timeframe of the project?

A: The basic timeframe is described below:

FIRST SIX MONTHS (CITY): When I first arrived in Palo Alto, City of Palo Alto staff asked me to wait six months before beginning the project.

SECOND SIX MONTHS (ARTIST): When we began the procedure for installing the "portable solar garage" in the plaza, the sculpture required architectural, engineering, and electrical diagrams to obtain the various permits. Without a budget, this process took time. It was only through the generosity of local residents and businesses that I was able to submit my permit applications. The architectural consultant (Joseph Bellomo Architects, Palo Alto), engineering consultant (Sierra Engineering Group, Union City), and photovoltaic consultant (SOLectric Electric, Palo Alto) were the people who made this happen.

THIRD SIX MONTHS (CITY): The City then required six months to review and approve the applications.

FOURTH SIX MONTHS (ARTIST): After receiving my permits, it took six months to build and install the sculpture in the Plaza. It was only because the metal fabricator (John Romanoff Welding, Redwood City) let me work alongside him at his shop that we were able to finish the "portable solar garage" on this budget. My tools were still in storage in New York and the budget did not allow me to rent a work space. I finished building the garage on-site in the Plaza and then installed explanatory texts in the plaza to explain the project to visitors.

Given the years of preparation to-date, and how close we were to January 1, we decided to take photos from January through December 2005 to enable me to capture the various seasons of Palo Alto, and their corresponding colors. In the meantime, we spent the three months prior to 2005 revising the GIS software and protocols (since the GIS procedure and parcel maps had changed since the original installation).

Q: How was this project possible on such a small budget?

A: There has been volunteer support from hundreds of residents and staff, including the donation of materials, software, hardware, services, lodging, and office space from many local and regional businesses. It has turned into an expanded grassroots effort and the project would have been impossible without their help. I have begun acknowledging these supporters in the "thank you" list below. The list will be properly expanded at a later date.

Q: Are you going to find the color of other cities?

A: This is a one-of-a-kind project. However, I did entertain the notion of a "Smallest Town, USA" project, i.e. to travel to all 50 states and photograph the smallest town in each state as an anthropological study of vanishing American frontiers.

According to Census 2000, three states have only one person in their smallest town: New Amsterdam in Indiana; Hibberts Gore in Maine, and Irvings Location in New Hampshire. Ironically, our smallest state, Rhode Island, has the most people in its smallest town of New Shoreham, with a population of 1,010.

Q: Are you selling these "portable solar garages"?

A: I do not have plans to mass-manufacture these garages, but this particular "portable solar garage"--the garage in which "The Color of Palo Alto" will be discovered--will eventually be for sale in a New York art gallery.

I would be happy to answer any questions or talk to anyone about the structure. A military contractor contacted me to talk about how they could use such a "portable solar garage" for desert testing. That is, how they could use the "portable solar garage" to run two computers with two people inside it in the middle of nowhere. The structure is an air-shippable, drop-down laboratory of sorts. Others have suggested the garage's potential for foreign aid work.

Q: What kind of electric scooter is that? How far can it go on a charge? And where can I get one?

A: The electric scooter is made by Oxygen SpA, an Italian company with an outpost in New York (www.cargoscooters.com). My scooter is from a distributor in Oakland, California called electricmotorsport.com. I believe the scooters normally cost about $1,500. I've been able to get 32 miles on a single charge. So far I average between 40 and 150 miles per week on it.

Aside from driving a zero-emission vehicle using zero-emission solar energy, the best part of the Oxygen is that it is a moped class vehicle, which means that you only need to register it once in California and it's good for life. I think it cost me $11.00 to register it at DMV, and then it cost $7.00 to add it to my car insurance policy. Basically, you're good to go for $20 bucks.

Q: When will you be in my neighborhood?

A: I'm taking the photos alphabetically by street. I started the "B" streets during the third week of photography. If you figure out what place in the alphabet the first letter of your street holds, you can probably multiply by two (weeks) to get the general time frame.

For example, Kipling Street begins with "K." "K" is the 11th letter of the alphabet. 11 times 2 weeks is 22 weeks, which puts "K" streets sometime in May, or 22 weeks into the year.

I'll try to figure out a better way to keep you updated on Version 1.0 of the website. It's difficult to spend time on that stuff in the midst of taking pictures every day. I don't have any staff.

Q: How long will it take to photograph all 17,725 parcels?

A: The project was designed to last one full year. In the end, I alternated roughly five days of 49 photos and four days of 48 photos, seven days per week, to photograph 17,725 parcels by the end of the year so that we had even data samplings for the entire year. That way, we can find subsets of "The Color of Palo Alto," such as Palo Alto in Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, or March, June, September, December, etc.

Q: How do you decide where to photograph a parcel?

A: I photograph every public-facing side of every "property parcel" from across the street. I try to center myself by using the roof outlines on my maps as a guide. Sometimes I use a rolling measuring stick to actually measure the center of a parcel. I do not always take the most photogenic shot of a house. For example, if a house is on the right side of a parcel, and a large yard is on the left side, I will photograph from the center of the parcel. I might only get part of the yard, or part of the house.

Another example is that if there is a bush in the way, and if I moved over 10 feet it would not be in the way, I still take the photo from the center of the parcel with the bush still in the way. I always try to take the photo from the center of the parcel, despite it being a worse photo. This way, there is a system with rules for me to follow, and I also get some incredibly random, and perhaps more interesting, shots. I would not get many of these shots if I was simply trying to photograph the house in the most photogenic manner.

Q: What is a "property parcel?"

A: In the GIS, a "property parcel" is a unique piece of land on top of which there can be many "parcels," or pieces of real property. For example, each unit of a condominium is technically its own "parcel." So, there can be many condominium "parcels" ("air parcels") stacked on top of the actual piece of land ("ground parcel"). The piece of land ("ground parcel") is called the "property parcel," while the condominiums stacked on top ("air parcels") are just "parcels." I photograph each side of each "property parcel," so one photograph could potentially be used to cover many "parcels" stacked on top of one "property parcel." For the purposes of the rest of this document, the term "parcel" really means "property parcel," or each unique piece of land, not the "parcels" stacked on top of them.

To illustrate more clearly, if there are 20 condominiums on a single corner lot, I photograph one side of the lot and the other side of the lot. I do not photograph all 20 condominiums individually.

Q: How do you decide which side of a corner parcel to photograph?

A: If a parcel is on a corner, such as the corner of Alma Street and Hamilton Avenue, I photograph both the Alma Street side and the Hamilton Avenue side of the parcel. Whichever photo was taken first alphabetically (Alma Street) becomes the vote for that parcel toward the overall color of Palo Alto. However, when computing the color of Hamilton Avenue, I would use the photo of the Hamilton Avenue side of the property to determine the color of Hamilton Avenue; and I would use the photo of the Alma Street side of the property when computing the color of Alma Street. Then, when computing the color of the neighborhood, I would use the average of both the Hamilton Avenue and the Alma Street pictures to be the one "vote" of color that contributes to the final color of the neighborhood.

It is Eli Schleifer's software that will perform all this magic, and he'll explain it in Version 1.0 of the website.

Q: I understand that Palo Alto spends less than 1 dollar per person on public art each year. How much did your project cost the City?

A: "The Color of Palo Alto" cost each resident roughly 17 cents, assuming that there are 58,598 residents in Palo Alto.

In return, each resident gets: 1) the average color of their parcel, street, neighborhood, and city; 2) a database to help city staff, especially city planners, to respond to requests and to maintain the city; 3) a database to help Police and Fire respond to 911 calls, perhaps even saving lives by shaving seconds off response times; 4) a historical record of Palo Alto for future generations; 5) an educational opportunity to promote four of the City's environmental initiatives; 5) a public artwork; etc.

Q: How does your beard fit into the project?

A: I shaved my head and beard the first day and I let them grow until I finished taking photographs at the end of 2005; I met many people in the plaza, and I thought the beard would be a nice way to mark time after someone meets me. My physical appearance was a visual reminder of how much time had passed since they last stopped by, and how much time it was taking to find "The Color of Palo Alto." The Rip Van Winkle effect.

Q: How did this public safety benefit emerge?

A: In 2001, when I came up with the idea to find "The Color of Palo Alto," I knew that I was going to be taking photos of every parcel in the city. I cold-called around City Hall from New York to see if anyone could find a use for the photos and, if so, how I should organize them to be most useful. The Real Estate department passed on the idea, and then I landed on Gloria Humble, a Senior Planner in the Planning Department. She explained that the City had a database of parcels called the GIS (Geographic Information System). It could be extremely useful to the City of Palo Alto to have a photograph of each parcel attached to its corresponding parcel in the GIS. However, she said that my handwritten notes would not have a very high quality control, so I should probably use a GPS with a digital compass to record where I was and which direction my camera was pointing. Thus, the GIS component of the project was born. The implications and uses for the data, such as public safety, began to emerge only after city staff learned that there would be a photo of every parcel.

The sense of public benefit is similar to the ethic of free data from the human genome project. The data, when made available, allows greater and unexpected outcomes to occur.

Q: Has anyone photographed an entire city before?

A: The entire city of Paris, France was photographed for their online Yellow Pages at least five years ago. The photos pop-up when you enter an address or telephone number, and you can navigate through the photos down the streets (for an example, visit "photos.mappy.com," click on "Paris," and then double-click somewhere near the center of Paris to begin seeing photos). Recently, many years later, in January 2005, a local US company, founded in October 2003 (coincidentally in Palo Alto), replicated this French Yellow Page search model for American cities.

In general, as far back as 1911 photographers began making tourist books of every building on a given street, such as "Fifth Avenue New York from Start to Finish" by Burton Welles, and "Both Sides of Broadway" by Rudolph DeLeeuw. Fifty years later, Ed Ruscha reinvented the genre, with a contemporary art ethos, in his "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" in 1966. Also, all of New York has been photographed relatively recently by an artist, and at least one company has had online photos of Manhattan Island for several years.

"The Color of Palo Alto" is about gathering color. It is not about taking photographs or efficiently capturing images for a business model. Indeed, there are probably few things less efficient than taking photos of the entire city, over an entire year, alphabetically by street, to capture the shades of the seasons.

"The Color of Palo Alto" is a fully-articulated "public art" project: part sculpture, part performance, part painting, part environmental art, part political art, part earthwork, etc.

Q: Do other cities have such an extensive database of photos for use by city staff and safety personnel?

A: In the past three years, since "The Color of Palo Alto" began, several companies have emerged to offer the service of photographing an entire city. However, it is still relatively expensive and department heads have a hard time justifying the expense for this not-yet-standard-practice. Because the City of Palo Alto will be getting a license for the dataset from "The Color of Palo Alto" so cheaply, as a byproduct of a public art project, the initial cost hurdle is avoided and staff can instead focus on how to use the photos.

The low cost to the City was made possible through the generous donations of regional businesses over many months of coordination. For the data gathering side of the project, special thanks to PNI Corporation, Santa Rosa for the digital compass; Trimble Navigation Limited, San Jose, for the GPS unit; Davis Instruments, San Leandro, for the weather station; Geodesy, San Francisco, for the GIS software; Kelly Fergusson, PhD for the GIS & GPS consultation; electricmotorsport.com for the electric scooter; Crystal Dynamics, Menlo Park, for the hardware upgrades; Washington Mutual, Palo Alto, for data storage space; and Levin Law Firm for initial office space and HP computer equipment.

THANK YOUS

"The Color of Palo Alto" would not have been possible without the generosity, goodwill, wisdom, and support of the following:

PORTABLE SOLAR GARAGE

DATA

INFRASTRUCTURE

ART

A more comprehensive list and description of these supporters and their contributions will be forthcoming. In the meantime, please send corrections to samuelyates@thecolorofpaloalto.com and the artist will apologize profusely for any errors or omissions. Thank you!

THE COLOR OF ROME: AN ANECDOTE

When [Henry Kaiser and his wife, Ale Kaiser] completed building their Portlock estate in their newly developed city of Hawaii Kai, it was first painted a beige color. Shortly thereafter, they took a combined business and pleasure trip to Italy where Ale became enamored with the colors of the buildings in Rome. Upon their return she decided she would like to repaint the estate "the color of Rome."

This was a neat little challenge thrown at Handy [Hancock, Kaiser's assistant] -- to find out just what the color was and to order the paint. No one was quite sure -- decorators, paint manufacturers and dealers, or even well-traveled people. All the books on Rome at the library were scanned to little avail. There was no single color that could be said was Rome -- the buildings were different shades ranging from beiges to pinks. Several of the best pictures were shown to Ale who demurred, "I'm not going to pick the color. I leave it up to you to find it."

Finally in desperation, Handy turned to the overseas office of Kaiser Aluminum who had contacts in Italy, asking them to put him in touch with a responsible Italian paint manufacturer. This company said it could provide a paint that would be representative of the general color of Rome. The order was placed, with the instruction to ship it as soon as possible and in the most expeditious manner possible.

The day the ship arrived in Honolulu Handy was at the dock ready to take delivery. There was one problem, however -- the paint was at the bottom of the hold with a lot of freight on top of it destined for Singapore. Despite personal calls from Kaiser, the captain of the ship refused to unload the whole hold just to reach the paint at the bottom and then reload again. He tried to appease Kaiser by saying the paint would be brought back to Hawaii on the ship's return. That was too indefinite so the captain was asked to transfer the paint at Singapore to the first ship coming back to Hawaii.

There was really no urgency for the paint, but to Kaiser everything was urgent, especially with his wife breathing down his neck. Four weeks later the exciting moment had arrived when the truck drove up to the gate with the hundreds of gallons of paint "the color of Rome." Kaiser and Ale were there, the decorator, the painters, the estate staff, and Handy on the truck to be sure it didn't get lost somewhere.

The painter ripped open one of the cartons, removed a 5-gallon can of paint, stirred it well and made a few swipes on the side of one of the buildings. There was a hushed silence. No one said a word. No one dared. The color was pink! What was worse it was a pink paint manufactured by DuPont in Italy, which could have been purchased in the United States for much less and obtained much sooner. With destiny riding on the color pink, and with hundreds of gallons of it on hand the estate was repainted, but no one ever referred to it as being pink -- it was "the color of Rome" from then on.

Excerpted from Albert P. Heiner, "Western Colossus: Henry J. Kaiser," Halo Books, San Francisco, 1991, Chapter 11: Hawaii Calls, Color Me Pink, page 333-334

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2001 to 2008. Samuel Yates. "The Color of Palo Alto" is a trademark of Samuel Yates.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The artist shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.