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Originally Posted by Keith P.
What do the creepy statues depict?
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My guess is the four cardinal directions / "four winds", although I'm not really sure. Each of them faces a different direction but I think they're lined up more with the street grid than with actual N/E/S/W. They are each identical (or roughly identical) with the front faces being flat and reflective, and the backs looking vaguely like a figure from ancient world mythology (I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be anyone specific). I find them a bit more interesting during the day - they're very reflective and shiny, and the obelisk-like podiums are striking.
The red/green lights under the docks are also a navigational reference - boats and aircraft use red and green lights to mark their left and right sides.
I assume the door/elevator (?) inside the Tidal Beacon is an accessibility feature, but at this point it's not really clear where it leads to, or if it even leads anywhere, which adds to the intrigue.
It's all a far cry from the steel lighthouses and paint-your-own-lobsters that were the reference points for "public art" here until pretty recently. It feels like there has been an abrupt and rather extreme shift over the last few years from a somewhat cheap, folksy-kitschy aesthetic and approach to arts and culture (including architecture) to a sleeker, more highbrow and/or flashy, and emphatically "of the times" approach. There's a sense that the late 90s/early 2000s stuff was mostly designed to placate people (without truly aiming to impress anyone) while the new stuff is mostly designed to impress or intrigue people, with varying degrees of success.
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