“33rd Street and 3rd Avenue” is often cited as an example of quintessential New York Accent. The idiosyncratic pronunciation’s use in a number of popular songs from the first part of the 20th Century, jokes and vernacular speech has anchored it in the public conception of what a New Yorker sounds like.
“Toidy Toid and Toid” consists of a panel of 50 acrylic sheets woven together, each representing an accent gathered on the streets of New York (5 per borough).
This project is both an homage to the accents that used to be encountered at 33rd Street and 3rd Ave and to the History of the New York inflection. It also evoques the relationship between disparate accents and the tension between an individual’s identity and that of the city as a whole.


User Scenario
The viewer is invited to interact with the installation in a variety of ways: 1. By looking at the graphic representation (created through a processing sketch tracking the amplitude and rhythm of each accent), engraved on each piece of acrylic along with some data about the accent’s “owner“ (birth place, age, length of english residency etc…). 2. By hearing the accent by touching the acrylic sheet (an FSR is connected to each acrylic square). 3. By contributing and visualizing their accent through a website: http://itp.nyu.edu/~ap2469/ttt/