Some 25,000 square miles of California are covered by desert, but it's not all barren, rippling sand. The desert is encroached upon by development and military colonization; marketed as the "next frontier of leisure"; and used illegally as a dumping ground. Some of it, of course, is pristine wilderness.

These visions and versions of desert — malleable, fragile, full of possibility — are what the folks at University of California Riverside's Sweeney Art Gallery and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts were thinking of when they began a series of artistic investigations they call "Mapping the Desert/Deserting the Map."

"The desert is this barometer, representing changes — politically, culturally and environmentally," says gallery director Tyler Stallings. So, beginning last year, Stallings and curator Richard Hebdige invited artists, grad students, and professors from seven UC campuses to roam their neighboring deserts, mining them not for their natural resources but for creative inspiration.

The third installment occurred this past weekend in Twentynine Palms, CA, a tiny town that houses the unlikely combination of the Joshua Tree National Park and Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. "Dry Immersion 3: Desert Projects" brought 24 artists to the area, presenting a combination of site-specific installations, photographs, videos and performances that uncover the desert's under-appreciated cultures and hidden landscapes.

For instance, the photographer Christopher Woodcock created Postmodern Mojave Viper, five large photographs documenting the Iraq/Afghanistan training facility there. Made of shipping containers, highway dividers, and crashed cars, it is an ecosystem unto itself, a makeshift city stashed within the winds and sand.

A video by Liz Chaney, Ash Smith and Claire Zitzow focused a video lens on Bristol Salt Lake, presenting it as more fecund than infertile. And Pete Hawkes and David Wicks's site-specific sound sculpture Resonance Field places ceramic plates in a desert plane. Their tones shift based on seismic activity.

No desert exhibition would be complete without an oasis, of course, so part of the project occurred at a literal watering hole: musical performances were held at the local bar, The Palms Bar and Grill.