reNEWable Times Square
New York, NY
Careful study reveals the truly communicative ability light and shadows have as they fall across the City. This is the type of natural energy that Times Square currently lacks. Instead we are confronted with a barrage of constantly changing yet strikingly stagnant media. By “capturing” the shadow lines cast across the Square at noon, a stream-like pattern reveals itself throughout the space – a modern day simulated ticker tape run on millennia-old technology.
Significant in theoretical considerations of astronomy and cosmology, and more commonly in the solution of more (daily) practical problems such as way-finding or “globally positioning” ourselves, the design posits a new frame of reference for New Yorkers in Times Square. Graphically challenged with representing the fourth dimension (‘spacetime’), of our experiences in Times Square, we seek to subvert the vernacular and reveal a two-dimensional language that speaks of and to this place.
To execute this, the artist becomes a messenger in space and a transcriber of place. A poetic stream of data is cast across and through Times Square. Pursuing a more antiquated method of time determination – the interpretation of sun and shadow - the architecture of Times Square crafts and communicates the more subtle, but equally dynamic experience of ‘timespace’.
Strikingly reminiscent of the swampy creek that once existed throughout Times Square, the design will provide an ephemeral record of the noon shadow on the day of each full moon in the eight months in which the installation will be present, positioning a site-specific solar/lunar calendar system. Each of the shadow lines are labeled with their respective dates or identities - represented in an abbreviated digital format - repeated over the course of the line, eliciting both a feeling of movement and interaction. A historical method of telling time comes full circle to confront the modern day stimulus of Times Square. In some areas these lines overlap and collide with one another; personifying the lines, blurring the text, and tracing the chaotic feeling of this civic space.
