Design and Ethnography Collab

For the first portion of the semester, Conor Clarke, Meredith Blumenstock and I worked in a group doing an ethnographic analysis of union square. We focused on the vendor culture of the south side of the park, and studied the communities of First Amendment vendors that exist within this group. Attached is a pdf concluding our findings.

Project pdf

Intro to Broadcast: Project 1 final revise

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Major Studio: New Media Public Art featuring Triangulation

this is a mouthful, but it basically means any public exhibition that maximizes communication between strangers…with that being said, here are 3 examples:

1. In Your Hands, by Dash MacDonald from ARS Electronika 2007

n Your Hands, a performance involving remote control roller skates created by Dash Macdonald.

Macdonald created roller skates that are controlled via a remote, which was manned by the installation visitors. In doing so, his destination and physical being was put into the hands of others. The point of this project was “meant only to divert attention from what’s actually going on—namely, a subversive social experiment that critically questions how far people are prepared to go in pursuit of their own entertainment.”(wmmna.com)…However, Macdonald creates and sustains triangulation through the formation of a crowd, and the subsequent interaction of that crowd with each other. By using entertainment as a blatant way of causing people to participate and interact with his piece, he also forces strangers to interact with each other in spectating and taking turns.

2.I, the world, things, life by Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren from the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2007

Dahlgren created an interactive dart board where the audience takes plastic arrows placed in boxes, and throws them at the wall covered in black and yellow dartboards. By taking part in the installation, the audience is continuely modifying the work of the artist, and previous visitors. Triangulation occurs between visitors who interact with the dartboard at the same time, causing discussion about what is going on.

3. Sohpie Calle, Greenwich Village phone booth project, 1994

This piece of work was based on a suggestion that the artist contribute to the improvement of life in New York City. She spent a week sitting on a chair next to a phone booth, and changed the aesthetic appearence by covering up the logos, stocking the booth with snacks, cigarettes, drinks and flowers. She also engaged passerbys in conversation and encouraged them to leave comments on the notepad she set up at the booth. This may seem a little dated, but back in 1994, before the first big boom of the cell phone craze, this public space art project was very relevant. The art took form based on the triangulation that occurred between Calle and the audience.

In the end representatives of the telephone company threw all of Calle’s improvements into a trash basket (wwmna.com).

Major Studio: Instruction Sets for Strangers

On the east side of Union Square there are rows of benches along the walk way. I noticed that certain “characters” seem to have locations that they specifically stay in. For example, there are two men who tend to sit on the more southern benches with their luggage, both are heroin addicts, and display the same sets of behavior every time I see them. There are also several homeless people who sleep or lounge on certain benches. While other “characters” have areas they stay in (i.e. the steps at the south end) they may move through the east part of the park.

In a city like New York, where personal space is something people consider valuable (despite an overwhelming feeling that the city lacks personal space), its inhabitants are sometimes willing to surrender their space, like on a packed subway car or an elevator. However, in a public space such as park, like Union Square, people go to have an experience, albeit contrived, with nature. But, people don’t just go for the nature, they go to get away from the business of the city, more specifically, more space.

There are unspoken courtesy rules about sharing objects within a public space, like the benches on the walkway, concerning the amount of space one takes up and what is “appropriate.” However, I find it interesting that people will come and sit down on the bench next to these characters. These people range from young couples to men in business suits on break. A few inches from the strung out heroin addicts is a happy couple playful engaged in a conversation. In a place like New York where public space and private space is cherished, why is it that people so willingly share a physical object with someone who they would not normally associate with?