beowulf at RDU airport (Raleigh-Durham, NC, USA)

[Jag]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2002, Joseph Mack wrote:

> I was surprised to see a beowulf at RDU airport on a recent departure.
> 
> Rather than a stack of commodity compute nodes, it is a fibreglass statue
> of a wolf, about 4' long x 2' high. The wolf's coat has printed 
> circuit board patterns on it. Being somewhat mystified and 
> having initially assumed I had just a statue of a wolf in front of me,
> I looked at the sign to see the title "Beowulf" with the name of the artist 
> and sponsor on it. The beowulf is on a platform edged by rectangular 
> circuit boards alternately on-end:on-side to give the profile of the 
> top of a castle wall.
> 
> The beowulf is just beyond the pick-up and drop-off area for terminal A. 
> Unfortunately it's in an area where most people are driving and trying 
> to avoid colliding with unpredictably moving objects; police, cars 
> pulling in and out and people on the crosswalks. Most people won't 
> notice the statue. I only saw it as I had time to kill and was going 
> for a walk outside the terminal.

As a resident of Raleigh, NC, let me try to shed some light on this.  At
some point last year, all over Raleigh statues of wolves, similar to the
one you saw, were put up all over Raleigh in public places.   There are
several on NCSU campus, as well as some downtown and in various other
places in the city, such as the airport.  Each statue is a wolf, but
they're all done with a different theme.  As I understand it, local
artists were commisioned to make these statues.

I really like the idea of one of these statues being devoted to beowulf
computing, I just wish it was in a better location.  I drove by this
statue the other day and noticed it, but was unable to make out the
smaller wolves and thus realize its meaning.


Jag
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