Beauty is only satellite dish deep

On Friday, Adelphia Communications Corp. became the first cable operator to offer hard-core pornography in Southern California.

A few days earlier, Adelphia and two other cable companies marked another milestone: the first known contest to turn old satellite dishes into what organizers are calling “modern art.”

It’s an innovation that Marcel Duchamp -- who converted a urinal into a celebrated and influential objet d’art in 1917 -- would probably have applauded.

“We get hundreds of discarded satellite dishes a month, when people give up the dishes to get cable,” says Deane Leavenworth, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable, which along with Adelphia and Charter Communications is holding the contest.

“What do we do? Normally we smash them up and throw ‘em away, which is not especially environmentally friendly.” His company’s interest in getting children involved in art led it to come up with a better idea for using the castoff dishes.

The contest kicked off with a news conference Tuesday morning at which middle-school kids from Eagle Rock’s Renaissance Arts Academy got together at the neighborhood’s Center for the Arts to tackle the challenge with the assistance of some wire, pipe and fabrics. Before starting, they received a brief speech on assemblage from artist Nancy Kyes.

Some painted the dishes; some attached flowers and feathers. “One kid did an island scene, with a coconut and fringe leather from a jacket,” Leavenworth says. “Another did a baby buggy. They were hilarious. These kids just went to town.”

The larger contest will last until the end of March, and high school and college students are invited to create satellite dish art to be judged by art professionals in early April. Besides offering awards for the best pieces -- of $1,000, $500 and $250 -- the cable outfits plan to auction those pieces and donate the proceeds to Cable Positive, the industry’s HIV/AIDS awareness campaign.

For more information, call (888) 544-8151 or e-mail dishart411@aol.com.