My proposal is to create an arbitrary monumentalizing of a place by making it reachable by phone.  Inspired by the story of the mojave dessert phone booth, and the lack of interest and destinationness in the elevated acre, I would like to give people the opportunity to call it.  Usually phones exist for a purpose, in places or in the pockets of people who at least somebody would like to reach.  Landlines, especially now that they are so uncommon, especially suggest that their place of existence is likely to be called. I have no idea who would want to call the elevated acre, or if anybody would, but I would like to provide everybody with that opportunity, and perhaps inspire people to call just because they can. Hopefully this experience will bring people together with the place and each other, and create the kind of serendipitous encounters that this park’s design and location prevent.

I have narrowed down my booth proposal to two versions:

In the first the booth, located at the elevated acre, accepts incoming calls. Inside is a phone with a phone number, and one would have to schedule to be called there, or let people know when they may be reachable in the park. Hopefully people would be inspired to call and speak with somebody random.

The second proposal takes more control over who you can reach from the booth, creating a network of parks, and installing a limited phone that can only connect to similar booths in the other parks. This version creates a connection and network between different public spaces.

Both transform the booth into a kind of portal, and the place of the booth into a destination, at least a phone call destination.

The feedback I got in class that the booth looks like a display case is very important, and I want to make sure to somehow not do that, while maintaining the minimal form and appearance. The main reason for wanting this, is that I do not want to reference the phone booth aesthetic itself, which I think would distract from the reference to the experience of using a phone booth, its portal-like effect, the experience of calling and connecting with other places, and the experience of the place it is in – the park.

I propose to install smoke ring puff cannons at the four corners of the ‘Elevated Acre’ turf lawn. These cannons will all point into the center of the park. When the rings come into contact with a person, they can actually feel the puff of air that originated however many feet away. I hopefully want to create a sense of the art reaching out to touch the audience.

The ring makers would be networked to a central control program that would run different loops of ring making cycles. The makers themselves would have microcontrollers that would decode the signals from the main program for when to actually creat the smoke rings and also keep track of how much fog is being made and how much water is needed

I would also like to have another, much larger, ring maker that would shoot vertically out of the “Beacon of Progress” in the far corner of the park. This ring will play with the space above the park created by the canyon of the surrounding buildings. This would hopefully draw people into this space and reach out beyond the park. 

This is the interaction I’d like to create with the cellars.

My fear is that regardless of what type of content I frame within the cellars, I will never get people to actually step into the space. They will always be peering into the cellar.

I can either choose to acknowledge this hindrance or strive to create something that instructs people to step into the space. With regard to content, I’m less interested in instruction sets than in revealing stories perhaps over time and across the modules of the cellars. Revealing the stories across the modules speaks to the idea of acquiring a concept through movement, a theme that I’m finding is a common thread in much of my work.

I’ve created a prototype of this piece that tests the interaction. The content though is not what I would ultimately like to convey so I’d like to use the rest of the semester to explore meaningful content that is specific to lower manhattan but that also has the potential to be relevant the other cellar modules that line the streets.

The content that I used in the piece was more playful and revealed surreal worlds residing within the cellar. When a person stepped onto the surface they began to “fall” through the portals and into the different worlds.

Video and additional documentation of the work can be found here.

Colombus Park is filled with organized movement: Tai-chi, chess and card games, performed by individuals or groups. The Northern section of the space is also a popular gathering area for the seniors-chinese immigrants of the surrounding Chinatown. To an untrained eye, the codified motions comprising tai-chi or chess may seem completely arbitrary or even absurd, but from the point of view of these practices’ connoisseurs, they are intricate and eminently deliberate. Similarly, the vibrant but insular community life taking place in Colombus Park can shift from alienating to comforting according to one’s social standpoint. The kinetic installation in the center of the park’s pavilion will echo this tenuous shift between understanding and confusion, outsider and insider. At first glance, it will seem like an array of disparate and uncoordinated objects/shapes. However, a singular spot will reveal an organized circular pattern slowly and elegantly looping from one state to the next. The viewer must thus engage with the piece by changing his perspective, engaging his own body in a dialogue with the structure’s movement.

Things that I “know” I wish to include in my site-specific piece:

• A scale model (17.5″ feet tall, 2.5″ wide, 10:1 basically) of James Bogardus free standing Cast Iron Tower. (http://tinyurl.com/3rvzytz)
• Combination of Brick, Cast Iron (or lighter metal with a patina/glaze) and a casted iron or otherwise spiral tub.
• Produces something spherical a few times an hour, which can be heard being released from the top, hit a collecting bowl where it spirals down, before being deposited in a collection box.
• People are free to take the sphere (BB? Metal Marble?) as it is spiraling downwards. The sphers are engraved with something on them.

What I want to engrave them with I am still undecided on. I wish for it to be related somehow to the plaza, but not in a direct historical context like the tower but rather reference the modern location. The strongest idea I’ve had so far resulted from being handed a “The Watcher” Jehovah’s Witness advertising magazine while quietly minding my business. I flipped through it casually while laughing to myself that someone believed this was the best way to reach people, and that the magazine (and consequently their religion) provided the absolute truth of the world. Therefore, this man was only trying to help me see what he believed to be true, so that I could be led to the correct path. I’ve been rather fond of spotting the word “Justice” engraved on the court building in-between the trees, and I began to think about the definition of Justice. Justice purports to strive for “fairness,” which ensures that all people are equal. In order for all people to be equal in the event of some wrong doing (grievance etc), and true accurate account of the events is required so that when Justice is served, that which is served rebalances the scale. Consequently, justice can only be served if those responsible for justice can view the true events that happened. I would like to give everyone the “Truth” so that in a way when people neglect to collect the spheres they are neglecting to engage with the true state of the park.

Any suggestions for ways to portray “truth” without being overtly literal? Are there other directions I should head with what I want to hand out?

My plan would be to make the installation semi-permanent, having a limited supply of the “truth” (although replenished by the supply of those not retrieved) and maintaining the tower for a short time following the consumption of the spheres.

Original Tower

Update: Images included: