Tag Archive for "urban screen"
Times Square
Temporary office: TKTS Stairs
For one glorious afternoon, my office was the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square.
Times Square
Times Square screens
I’m not saying I got a ton of work done, but in a somewhat surprisingly, all the screenage became almost like white noise. It wasn’t that hard to tune out.
Times Square
How many screens?
For a while I tried to count all the screens facing/in Times Square, but I quickly gave up and wondered if the task could be crowd sourced? Maybe I could create a job for the Amazon Mechanical Turk to count these pix?
Times Square
Scenic Overlook
For many people, the TKTS steps are a vantage point, like a scenic overlook on the Interstate.
TImes Square
Times Square as backdrop
All the photographing activity made me think about all the “pocket screens” in Times Square. In December 2009, there was an actual count of 364,000 pedestrians in the area. If we assume that 75% of those people are carrying phones or computers with an average screen size of 2″ x 2″, that’s 1,638,000 square inches of screen. Still way less than an acre (about .25 acres), but that’s not even counting all the taxis displays and vehicular GPS devices.
As these devices become increasingly networked, the “power” will not be in the white noise of size but in the magnitude of “connection.”
Times Square
Meeting Bowls, Times Square
Interestingly, when I met with Glenn Weiss, Manager of Public Art and Design for the Times Square Alliance, he said that his experience with the public art program in Times Square is that somewhat counterintuitively anything over 15′ gets lost in the cacophony of the screens. Up to about that height, and a good project will attract spectators about 5 rows deep. Over that, and the project, even a “spectacular” one, often gets lost.
I think you could argue that above a certain height and the “connection” is lost.
Times Square
Forever 21 billboard
Interestingly, the one exception, which perhaps proves the rule, is the Forever 21 billboard, which has a simple set up of a “spy cam” from the billboard pov onto Times Square at street level. In other words, people standing within its penumbra become part of the billboard. Periodically, green screen beauties dance and shake their way onto the (billboard) street with you.
It’s mind numbingly simple interactivity, but there were the crowds gathered 5 deep looking up at the billboard and waving and photographing and paying attention – above 15′.
Times Square
Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York’s Streets
I attended Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York’s Streets that evening. Prof. Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University, gave an excellent mini-history of Times Square. In the day, thousands would visit Times Square to get the latest news.
Times Square
The Great White Way
In a phrase I particularly loved, Wright said that Times Square, whatever it was called at the time, has always been a site of ephemeral, mediated architecture.
Times Square
From an auto-centric policy to a city of great streets
Ethan Kent, Vice President of the Project for Public Spaces, talked about some of the simple but effective “moves,” like making Times Square pedestrian-centric, which are part of a larger goal to think of “traffic” as not only cars.
Times Square
Simple Rules to Make Transportation a Positive Force
• Stop planning for speed/capacity
• Start planning for community-based outcomes
• Think of streets as public space
• Accommodate diverse users
Times Square
Placemaking Planning
Iterative, feedback loop vs. a straight-line process that hopes to discover a use only the end of the process, when it is often too late
It would be great to have some U.S. cities as part of this Connected Cities experiment.
Bring to Light from Max Tiberi on Vimeo.
Brooklyn Street Art: We’re always talking about the intersection of Street Art, Urban Art, Public Art, Performance, Projection Art – do you think that there is a growing interest among city dwellers in reclaiming public space for art?
Interesting interview with the organizers of the recent NYC nuit blanche, Bring to Light.
From the home page of Virtual Street Corners, a public art project by John Ewing with Boston Cyberarts & the Knight Foundation
This project looks great, and I’m excited to see it, but I do hope that by launch time there is at least some acknowledgment of Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz’s pioneering Hole In Space (1980) project between LA and New York, which informed their LA Olympics original Electronic Cafe (1984), which had some of the same explicit goals of creating virtual discourse and sociability between geographically divided neighborhoods.
Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole In Space, 1980. Via Media Art Net.
Wing Young Huie, University Avenue Project(ion) site. Courtesy the artist.
Get involved with The University Avenue Project
Photographs by Wing Young Huie are installed over 6 miles of University Avenue in Saint Paul for The University Avenue Project…an extraordinary public exhibition that is on display in storefronts and on building facades May 1 – October 31, 2010.
At the center of the exhibit is The University Avenue Project(ion) Site, located at 1433 University Avenue. On a nightly basis beginning at dusk, Wing’s photographs are projected on 40′foot screens, accompanied by a soundtrack from local musicians. The last Saturday of each month, we invite local talent to take the stage for The University Avenue Project Cabarets.
We are currently recruiting volunteers for the May 29th Cabaret and for the nightly show at The University Avenue Project(ion) Site
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Opening night, Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project
Last night was the magnificent “culmination” of years of photographing University Avenue in Saint Paul, MN, by artist Wing Young Huie. Four years in the making, tenaciously midwifed by Public Art Saint Paul, The University Avenue Project is a major public art installation with hundreds of photographs posted in businesses along 6 miles of the Avenue. Hundreds of people came to the “Project(ion) Site,” at 1433 University Avenue, conceived and produced by Northern Lights.mn with MS&R Architects, where a nightly slide show of Wing’s work can be seen accompanied by a rotating soundtrack of MN-based musicians through October 31.
Wing Young Huie reviewing test of the University Avenue Project(ion) site at 1433 University Ave., St. Paul, MN
Northern Lights was invited by Public Art Saint Paul and Wing Young Huie to participate in Wing’s University Avenue Project by proposing a “Project(ion) Site,” where there will be a nightly 2-hour show beginning at dusk of more than 450 of Wing’s photographs, which he has taken over the past 4 years, and which are exhibited along a 6-mile stretch of University Avenue.
The show begins tonight, Saturday, May 1, at 8 pm at 1433 University Avenue, and runs through October 31. More details.
Workshop, HelloWorld!: Contemporary stage creation and new technologies
Yesterday, I had to the opportunity to drop in on Medialab-Prado, the innovative organization in Madrid behind Interactivos?, among many other outstanding programs, which the 01SJ Biennial will collaborate with in September.
The new Ars Electronica Center
I was in New York last weekend and made a point of going to see Gilbert & George’s 1970 video “A Portrait of the Artists as Young Men,” which Creative Time was presenting as part of its 44 1/2 program in Times Square. I was not disappointed. The dissonance between the stillness of the video, where they stare unblinkingly (pretty much) at the camera without making any kind of effort – including to be perfectly still – and the frenetic blinking of the Times Square signage around them is even eerier than seeing the video in a white cube setting.
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