The collected and assembled physical conditions and everyday events captured in audio and video were amplified as a sliver of time and played within a moving container at the four year anniversary of the collection of the footage in the spring of 2005. The structure of this container is divided into seven bays that define the physical structure of its construction yet also mark the seven days of the trajectory -- the structure of the document -- a segment of time. Wood panels that are inserted within these bays are articulated by markings that bring light into the container while revealing information about the city -- major street that intersect Broadway from east and from west. The section-cut (Broadway) is clearly marked as a sliver of light, an implied vertical plane defined by a gap.
By walking Manhattan slowly -minute-by minute, block-by-block -- over a period of seven days, from sunrise to sunset, using Broadway street as the trajectory, a series of stationary takes using the zoom feature of a video camera werecollected in 2001 in a process that measured and read the city.
The systems of measure used were of various scales and related to both time and distance. Some are artificial (every fifteen minutes), others are natural (sunrise to sunset). Zooms and their distance capcities, the lenghts of the city blocks, the breakdown of the week into days, hours, minutes (and the various activities that inhabit these time segments) were some of these measuring systems.
Diagram of the project from the initial video mapping to the constrtuction of the mobile installation showing the interrealtionship of the mapping with the construction of the mobile unit to the choreaography of movement at the seven different park sites over a period of seven days.
The same public that has been documented, the same public that constitutes the map also physically inhabited this document in passing and in going about their respective daily activities. The real time activity of the inhabitants of the city who entered the container this spring 2005 played their rituals against the rituals of four years past while pausing and reflecting on the changes of their city.
fort tryon park mitchel park montefiore park
straus park dante park
union square
bowling green Attached to a vehicle, this container traveled the lenght of Broadway Street in Manhattan over seven days with specific rest moments that grounded it momentarily (for a measured period of time) yet also marked the locations where Broadway is crossed by an avenue, continuing to measure and locate. This marked the unique condition of interstitial parks that occur on the city from the residual spaces of these crossings as this line slowly diverges from the grid of the city.
The container encapsulated the information collected as inscriptions, projections, sounds, movements, pauses. The document within played the collected footage at three speeds: slowed down to occupy the lenght of seven days, at normal speed and sped-up. These various time formats allowed different conditions of the city to be read and juxtaposed within the space of the city. Their assemblage in the container constituted another map, a three dimensional, inhabitable document, on and moving on Broadway.
These collected and assembled physical conditions and everyday events, captured in audio and video were amplified as a sliver of time cycled and presented on Broadway Street at the fourth anniversay of the footage collection. The activity of four years past was overlapped on the activity that looped the city block-byblock, day-by-day four years later.
The mobile unit at its final location in Manhattan, Fort Tryon Park
ny a v is one of a series of urban mappings and part of an ongoing research project on issues of temporality, public space and representation done in collaboration with the Principal Investigator of the project Martha Skinner. The project as art and as architecture brought issues of architecture and urbanism directly to the public as an interactive mobile display traveling the length of Broadway Street in Manhattan during the period of one week in 2005. The footage which played in the moving container was that of the activity of that same street four year prior and edited as one uninterrupted take – a zoom through Broadway Street and a cross-section through the island. From South to North, sunrise to sunset on a seven-day, minute-byminute cycle along the entire length of Broadway Street in Manhattan, a cross section through the city was collected and assembled to construct a living map of the city. A three-dimensional document composed of video images, sound, and life size markings on the surfaces of a mobile installation, that was choreographed and constructed from these collected video images of Manhattan to reveal both physical and ephemeral qualities of the city. Not only are the physical transformations of the city along this significant path captured; the proportions, distribution and spacing of the street, the buildings and their time periods, the document also reveals the transforming rhythms of life captured through the passing of districts with their various populations and activities. These as slices of real life; everyday events will be amplified, measured, and experienced within the space of the installation.
The installation under construction on the Clemson campus prior to its trip to NYC
At Straus Park - The installation was designed to be fluid with the street. Open at both ends to allow the life of the street to pass through and encounter the past.