Seattle Monolith On the Move Again

S E A T T L E, Jan. 8 -- A mysterious giant metal slab, caught in an equally mysterious tug of war since its appearance in a Seattle park on New Year’s Day, will now return to its original base.

ABCNEWS’s Seattle affiliate KOMO reports that the monolith, built to mimic the inscrutable, shrieking alien artifact in Stanley Kubrick’s classic science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and which was quietly removed from its perch in Magnuson Park in north Seattle shortly after its debut there, will be returned soon.

Built by an artists’ cooperative called “Some People,” the artifact’s mystical appearance captured the attention of people around the world, but that’s about as far as the artists thought their prank would go.

But just a few days later, they say someone stole the 500-pound steel sculpture, and installed it on Duck Island in the middle of Green Lake, a popular jogging and strolling site.

Louie Raffloer, the head of Black Dog Forge who built the 9-foot-tall replica of Kubrick’s conundrum, was surprised by the response to the quasi-extraterrestrial object.

“Everyone who was involved in this didn’t know it would skyrocket and that around the world people would have known about this,” Raffloer said.

Seattle artist Caleb Schaber, 27, said the 15 members of Some People spent several months planning the monolith project. The slab measures about 9 feet tall, 4 feet wide and 1 foot thick.

Always One Step Ahead

The monolith’s appearance and re-appearances in 2001 heralded portentous events — the dawning of intelligence, the evolution of species, and the fearful attraction of the unknowable.

Its appearance in Seattle drew similar wonder and praise. It reminded Rebecca Sargent, who visited the site, of Machu Picchu, the ancient Incan ruins — similar vibe, she said last week.

Her husband, Denny, was a little more cynical, humming the Space Odyssey theme as he moved forward to touch it.