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Tunnel Suburban House

Passers by are clearly awestruck by this amazing suburban art installation. The tunnel house gives an illusion of vertigo, a sense that it is being sucked in upon itself – a compelling visual effect.

The above shot shows both of the artists (left), who clearly have a sense of humor about the entire project. Amazingly enough, people can even interact with this piece, walking through the middle and coming out the other side!

The tunnel tapers through the center of house, becoming a crawlspace that ‘drains out the other side. A surreal experience to be sure, and probably the most typical house would could choose to turn into an amazing piece of suburban installation art!

http://weburbanist.com/2007/07/14/the-tunnel-house-suburban-street-art/

New Outline

Brand: SPUR

Topic: Public Art Installation

Question: What are the functions of public art to the city of San Francisco? What values do they add to the city?

Pillars: Placement, Comfort, Nature, Statements (Raising awareness)

Hot Ideas Report

SPUR
March 28, 2011
 
Introduction:
SPUR’s ultimate goal is to allow San Francisco to grow and change while remaning true to the qualities that make it a beautiful and livable city. Meanwhile, one of SPUR’s priorities for community planning is to create great public places in San Francisco Bay Area. SPUR mentions that “Great neighborhoods need great public spaces. These can take the form of parks, privately owned public open spaces (POPOS), or sidewalks and street designs that invite neighbors to take a leisurely stroll.”

Discovery:

1. Unexpected Retreat

Itay Ohaly placed elevated benches affixed to street poles, to offer pedestrians an alternative place to sit and relax. This is an example of how art installation creates a refreshing twist on an everyday object. The piece offers a whole new function to a previously overlooked and rigid space.
http://www.ohaly.com/

2. Birdhouse For Humans

To create a place of comfort or sanctuary in nature seems to be one of art installation’s goal. Eventually, these birdhouses encourage people to spend more times outdoor in public places.

http://www.dedon.de/en/collections/detail/collection/nestrest-171/hanging-lounger-1412/chalk-75.html

Started off as an event created for people to interact with each other, WaterFire installation in Providence, Rhode Island, has become an internationally known community arts event. Its initial goal is to get Americans out of their cars and back to public spaces, but it proves to cause so much more than that. The mission is to inspire residents and visitors by revitalizing the urban experience, fostering community engagement, and creatively transforming the city.

http://www.waterfire.org/

4. An Endless Forest In The City

DUS Architects from Amsterdam made it possible for the public to take a break from the concrete jungle and get back to nature with its project: Unlimited Urban Woods. Inside a small both, the visitors will see limitless trees and woods. Even if the forest wasn’t real, the sense of being in a vast space certainly was.

http://www.dusarchitects.com/projecten.php?taal=english

5. A Different Take On Manhattan

The Highline is a park in Manhattan, NYC built on a derelict railroad. Its height ables the visitors to see the skyline, while still close enough to make eye contacts with the people on the sidewalks. It alters the public’s perspective on the city.

http://www.thehighline.org/

6. Installation Serves As A Political/Ecological Statement

The display of a 63 meter yellow natural gas pipe in the garden of the Venice Biennale is both impressive and disturbing at the same time. The message behind it is that political issues should be put on the table more often when discussing architecture: the growing imprint of large-scale infrastructure on contemporary landscape, the architect’s critical role in relation to power, the future of energy, etc.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/10/a-section-of-bright-yellow.php

7. Community Performance in Google Street View

The Street With A View is an ironic comment on the idea of access to reality through mass-media images. The artists Ben Kinsley and Robert Hewlett invited residents of the Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh to participate manipulating the Google Street View with their collective bizarre performances. It is a unique installation because the public is the installation itself.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/01/the-best-way-to-kick.php

8. Placement Significance On An Installation

“Defenestration” literally means throwing something out of a window. Located at the corner of 6th and Howard St in San Francisco in an abandoned four-story tenement building, the artwork speaks for itself. The furniture (a grandfather clock, dirty couches, broken refrigerator, etc) sticking out from the window reflects the harsh history of the neighborhood that has often endured the stigma of skid row status.

Sometimes an art installation’s purpose is no other than to make something more appealing to look at. With the colorful movie theatre seats, the artist is questioning why do every other cinema seats have to look identical.

http://www.designbuild-network.com/projects/light-house/light-house2.html

Brad Downey doesn’t create his art completely from scratch. Instead, he takes objects we see everyday on the street and subtly make his own version of them. Downey’s work often conveys characteristics of animation and life to inanimate objects and in many cases encourages interactivity.

http://www.braddowney.com/

Artist will ryman has created ‘the roses’, a site specific installation that scatters roses along park avenue between 57th and 67th street in new york city. The presence of the over-sized roses hopes to enliven the dull winter atmosphere in the concrete jungle.

http://willryman.com/installations.php

Ralf Schmerbeg created ‘Der Stromfresser’, an igloo built of 322 refrigerators to help raise awareness for energy efficiency. The message is “Wastefulness is the biggest source of energy. With more efficient use of energy, Germany could save 40%.”

http://laughingsquid.com/an-igloo-built-from-322-refrigerators-in-hamburg/

The urban furniture responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to prevail. It also allows the reactivation of different public spaces. By playing this risky game and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.

Playback evokes the memory of an old tennis court. The court was long ago abandoned and has since become overgrown. The outlines of the court were redrawn with white nylon strapping elevated above the ground to make an apparition of the old court. Art installation, as in this case, also serves as a nostalgic piece that calls back to mind the history of a certain place or event.

http://www.harriesheder.com/projects/museum-installations/play-back/

Artist Candy Chang turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood into a giant chalkboard where residents can write on the wall and remember what is important to them in life. It transforms neglected space into constructive ones where people can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around them. The installation is very interactive; it calls for community participation, thus brings the neighborhood closer to each other.

http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/

Improv Everywhere

What is IE (improv everywhere)?

As some of you have seen by looking at IE’s site, this type of flash mob encourages fun behaviors and interesting scenes around New York City. There are even Global divisions of IE that execute their own little missions of “chaos and joy”. However, the purpose of the site is much more about self promotion than an informative tool that the public can use to get involved.

I signed up a few weeks ago to become one of their “agents” (people who are invited to participate in missions). My hope was that I would be called upon to be involved in one of their well orchestrated and amusing missions. However, in the past few weeks, I have received no information at all from them. I found this somewhat strange because they seem to promote the idea that anyone can participate and submit ideas.

As Virtuous as they seem?

One of the goals of IE is to promote, “organized fun”. However, they only open this “fun” to anyone who wants to participate a few times per year (for their MP3 player experiment and No-Pants pranks). The other 40 or so missions are executed by Charlie Todd and his close group of “experienced agents”.

IE takes great pride in what it does and can be defensive at times. As Shelia commented on the last post, the band REM recently used the idea of mass freezing in place as a way to market their new CD. Improv Everywhere recently executed “mass freezings” which spawned a global phenomenon of people freezing in place.

Charlie Todd took a very defensive position which can be seen here. Basically he was pissed off that REM did not credit Improv Everywhere with coming up with the idea of freezing in place. This sparked a response from IE Agents and readers of the IE site where all of the comments supported Charlie Todd and demanded that REM give IE credit, even though freezing in place was not IE’s idea. I posted the following in response to the post

“I gotta agree with James. Did IE give any credit to those who froze in place in the past? maybe even a “thanks to all of the freezers who inspired this scene”. I dont think so. Although IE made it popular, it is like a cover artist who doesnt give credit to the original writer. Then the cover artist complains when someone else makes a cover of their song. Not quite right.”

http://www.mushon.com/spr08/nmrs/04/08/we-cause-scenes-we-are-a-closed-community-improv-everywhere/

Interactive Wallpaper

Media architecture collective, Urban Alliance, recently installed what they call “interactive urban wallpaper” in a pedestrian tunnel in Amsterdam.  Made from 2,500 LEDs set behind a ribbed, semi-transparent wall, the lights react to people’s movement as they they walk through the tunnel.  In addition to making it less vulnerable to graffiti, the curves in the wall also enable the images to be seen more clearly from outside the tunnel.

Urban Alliance is composed of Dutch architects Studio Klink, production companyIlluminate, artist Matthias Oostrik and design and construction firm Cube.

http://www.psfk.com/2009/03/interactive-urban-wallpaper.html

Human Mirror

For our latest mission, we filled a subway car with identical twins, creating a human mirror. We would get on the 6 train at the start of the line at Brooklyn Bridge and the twins would sit on either side of the car, directly across from their sibling. Once in place, their job would be to mirror each other as closely as possible. If one scratches his head, so should the other. If anyone asked them what was going on, they should claim not to notice anything unusual and not to even be able to see their sibling.

http://improveverywhere.com/2008/07/06/human-mirror/