By Catharine Richert

MPR News/90.1

Rochester is getting a first look at four new art installations that will be constructed in the city’s downtown Peace Plaza.

The area is already anchored by Peace Fountain. But the Destination Medical Center project has called for revitalizing the area, in part with public art. The long pedestrian-only area stretches between Rochester’s central business district and Mayo Clinic’s Gonda building.

Columbus, Ohio artist Ann Hamilton’s “Aeon” will be among the new installations. It will feature writings about time carved into the ground, and bound by a single spine of words — like a book or the body part.

“I started to think about our perception of time, and how we experience time in our bodies,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton is a 1993 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius award.”

Her work will be accompanied by installations from three other artists, including Rafael Lozano-Hemmer from Montreal, Quebec, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle from Chicago, Ill., and Eric Anderson from Rochester, Minn.

Eric Anderson’s “Wakefield” will use Mayo Clinic data to express real-time medical events — like a birth or a death — with light and fog.

“I’m interested in using time not as much as a measurement but as a medium. And I think that ties into the real time event that’s happening between people and events happening within Mayo,” Anderson said.

Anderson’s piece is an extension of an installation displayed at Rochester’s 2016 Prototyping Festival.