Seaside Computer : Sand Replaces Silicon in Whale of a Replica

Across the beach from the psychics, the bodybuilders, the painters, the barefoot fellow who walks on glass and all the rest of the zany crowd on the Venice Boardwalk, Todd Vander Pluym knelt in the sand Tuesday, another kind of artist with his own peculiar dream.

The bushy-bearded former architect and world backgammon champion from Redondo Beach was building a sandcastle.

It was no ordinary sandcastle. Spectators, in fact, had a hard time telling just what the 25 tons of sand were supposed to be.

“A space city?” asked Julian Burnham, 18, a vacationing student from England.

“The top of the Empire State Building?” guessed Bobby Alvarez, 5, of Hollywood.

Charles Hitzbeeck put on his sunglasses and peered.

“A science fiction pyramid?” the tourist from Germany asked, and began filming the show.

By midafternoon, it had become clear to the swelling group of spectators on the beach just what Vander Pluym and his four sunburned assistants were creating: a giant computer made of sand.

The project was concocted by Computer Sciences Corp., an El Segundo software services company, as a way to reward five employees for outstanding creativity on the job last year--while getting some sunny publicity for the firm.

At 3 p.m. the five computer whizzes, wearing tuxedos, were posed in the sculpture and told to pretend they were “computer gremlins” for the cameras.

Vander Pluym--who donated his services because he is a friend of one of the honorees--is a world-champion sand sculptor. He has designed everything from screaming gnomes to a life-sized castle for his friend to get married in, but he had never done--or used--a computer.

The artist said he studied photos of the machines before he set to work designing what he called “computer guts” from sand. On Monday, his crew poured the sand into a wooden mold. By 10 a.m. Tuesday, they had begun to shape the mound with trowels, kitchen spatulas and water.

The tides would wash away the creation overnight, but its admirers, young and old, didn’t care Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s more neat than the bald-headed guy we saw with the big arms!” said Hawthorne resident Junior Camara, 7, who watched with his two cousins during a break from their hunt for sand crabs.

Sarah Kantor, 80, sat on the beach as she has every sunny day for 40 years, she said, a faded yellow parasol stuck into the sand beside her.

“It’s beautiful,” the West Hollywood resident said. “It’s a castle like I’ve never seen before.”