Can huge rock be art? One thing is for sure: whether it's art or not, moving such a rock is a feat of engineering marvel.
A 340-ton granite boulder (which has its own Twitter account) is slowly making its way from a dusty rock quarry in Riverside, California, to Los Angeles, where it will be installed in artist Michael Heizer's art titled "Levitated Mass":
The artist plans to have the rock placed over a 139-metre-long trench in such a way that when museum visitors walk underneath it will appear to be floating in the air above them. [...]
Museum officials say the reclusive artist, who has spent much of the past 40 years building "City," a Mount Rushmore-sized project near his home in the central Nevada desert, envisioned "Levitated Mass" even before that. But he couldn't really proceed until he found the right rock.
What he found was two stories high, teardrop-shaped and so heavy and bulky it took a specially built flatbed trailer the length of a football field to transport it.
The trailer, equipped with 44 axels, built to hold at least a 450,000 kilograms [500 ton - ed.] and powered by 550- to 650-horsepower engines in the front and back, will be accompanied by as many as 60 people who will clear a path for the rock and make sure it doesn't smash into anything going around turns. It will travel no faster than 8 to 13 kilometres per hour [6 to 8 mph - ed.] and only late at night and in the early morning.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/105277