Location Scouting for Art Under the Bridge

By Christian Cerrito on Day 2

So, I’m a bit late in posting, and I have to apologize for that. Unfortunately, at around four in the morning last night, I realized that my second 5-in-5 project was getting completely out of hand, possibly better suited for a weeks worth of experimentation and building then a day. I may try and simplify and rebuild for Friday, we’ll see.

Anyway, yesterday morning/afternoon I had another project to deal with, location scouting. I’m lucky enough to have a small installation in the Art Under the Bridge Festival in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), Brooklyn, and yesterday the folks at the DUMBO Arts Commission asked me to come down and meet with them. I’m incredibly excited to be a part of this, and pretty nervous at the same time. I’m calling the project “Stories from Things Left Behind,” an extension of one of the very first p-comp project I ever worked on (“Trash Talk” with Dave Overholt and EJ Park).

“Stories From Things Left Behind” is about a series of discarded objects: a shipping crate, a few kids’ lunch boxes, a briefcase, a steamer trunk, and a record case, all abandoned in a trash heap. The objects themselves will be outfitted with carefully hidden Arduinos, motors, speakers, and small LED lighting systems, enabling them the tell their “stories”. Inside the briefcase, for instance, it will sound as though a tiny board meeting is taking place, inside the lunch boxes, the sounds of kids laughing, the record crate, a 70’s disco party, etc. The objects, rejected and discarded, are understandably bitter; though they are more then happy to talk to one another, when a person comes to close (within 5-6 feet) they immediately clam up and shut their lids.

In order to make this all work, choosing the proper location is important. I need somewhere visible, yet slightly out of the way, so as to make the discovery of these pieces a surprise. The festival goes on for three days, and a lot of it is outside, meaning that dealing with rain is always a possibility. In order to determine when someone has wandered into the scene, I’ll be using ultra-sonic proximity sensors, which don’t do well in crowded spaces. Also, in order to use as few of these sensors as possible (I’m hoping to get away with just two for the whole thing), I need the space to be in a corner of sorts, so I can position the beams properly. All in all this is quite a bit to consider.

The DAC does an amazing job of working with local property management companies, business, and the city to allow artists to put their work in a variety of sites in the DUMBO area. This is amazingly accommodating, even maybe a little too much; I expected to be given just a few options, to make a quick decision, and then to be on my way. Instead, I spent six hours wandering around DUMBO, taking some snapshots, and weighing options.

Here are some of the spots I’m considering. I know that they look like nothing now, but come Sept. 26^th, with a lot of luck, I should have everything up and running.

All in all, this wasn’t really how I planned on spending my day (my living room is covered in red fabric as a testament to this), but this was a project in and of itself, and I’m glad I got it done.

July 31st, 2008