Parallel Cities/Pavilion of the past is a proposed, interactive sound installation situated in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. It addresses the history of New York City through an aural abstraction of the history of Flushing Meadows.
Site History:
Until about 15,000 years ago, New York was covered by a 1000 foot thick glacier that extended over much of Northeast America. When it receded, the top earth material was scraped away leaving a terminal moraine, composed of 500 million year old bed rock. The negative space of the ice sheet became the contour of the land New York is built upon.
People have lived on this land off and on for the last 8,000 years. The Lenape, or Delaware Indians lived here. The Dutch colonized it and called it New Amsterdam. The English took it and called it New York. Since the Dutch came, New York has been a trading post, a commercial zone, a hub of industry.
In the early 1900s, the Corona Ash Dump covered the tidal marsh area that would become the park. Ash produced by coal burning furnaces in the city was dumped here daily. In the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes “Mt. Corona”, as it was known, as a symbol of industrial society’s decay and waste produced by the rich.
“This is the valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The ash dump was a ghost city made of ephemeral structures, reshaped daily by the furnaces that powered the lifestyle of industrial New York.
In 1936, the Corona Ash Dump was flattened into a 5km2 park that would be the site of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair. The fair was comprised of extraordinary, experimental, temporary architecture. It presented the “World of Tomorrow” – a utopian future city comprised of technological marvels.
The fair ended in financial disaster because of poor accounting, and the eruption of WWII, and the temporary city was dismantled.
In 1964, the park became the site of another World’s Fair.
The fair was a showcase of mid-20th century American culture and technology. At the center of the park stands the fair’s symbol of “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe” – the Unisphere, depicting our earth of “The Space Age”. Temporary pavilions housed international and corporate displays, contained idealized presentations of modern technologies and international relations. Walt Disney’s animatronic exhibit “It’s a Small World” debuted here.
The ’64 World’s Fair also ended in financial disaster, and the structures were dismantled, save two: the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion. The skeleton of the tent of tomorrow and observation towers can still be seen today, a fossil of a temporary city.
Parallel Cities:
Flushing Meadows is a space that evolves in parallel to New York City. Temporary structures that inhabit it are imprints of New York/industrial/modern life.
Impetus:
The life that molds this parallel city is embedded in the land itself as audible material.
Project Proposal:
Parallel Cities/Pavilion of the Past presents itself as a structure that is integrated with the landscape of the park. It is part pavilion, in the tradition of the World’s Fairs, and part archaeological excavation.
It is a cave which is ambiguously man-made or discovered, made of earth that is ‘radio’-active.
The floor is earth, and slopes down from the entrance to the opposite end of the cave. The interior walls are made of porous fiberglass fashioned to look like a cave interior. Speakers are concealed within the walls, invisible to the viewer. The lighting is natural, and the sonic environment is delicate.
Localized speakers in the walls, floor and ceiling contain specific audio/historic memories for the audience to discover as they explore the space. Audio artifacts come in and out of focus with time and position in the room.
Here is a simulation of a tour around the space:
Parallel Cities/Pavilion of the Past Tour
There is a constant ambient sound of burning coal mixed with the pops of vinyl and cassette tapes – artifacts of ‘radio’-active decay.
The low hum is the sound of singing glaciers, pitched up to be perceptible to human ears.
Original audio from the ’39 and ’64 World’s Fairs is presented next to sound processed with musical elements from specific time periods. Convolution is used to blend between time periods.
Each speaker has a dedicated mp3 player and audio loop. The players are either powered by batteries which are changed daily, or by lines from existing structures in the park. The Audio is soft, inviting viewers to get close to the walls in order to make out details in what they are hearing.
