the anatomy of motion
[TI-16] fine arts agency, interventions & subversions, the punctuated pause between every whirlwind
I'm writing this in our new, still-forming home office. This past month has been filled with motion. I flew back to San Francisco from New York yesterday morning. Last weekend I flew out to New York and the weekend before I moved apartments in SF to the Sunset. Things are in flux. I've been packing and unpacking and traveling in planes and trains—weaving in and out of sculptures and under light-filled skyscrapers and above roaring trains and along worn dirt trails. I feel like an out-of-focus image, an artsy long-exposure portrait where the subject looks like they're materializing in the air.
'Space², Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978’, Francesca Woodman, 1975-8 | Tate taken from this Are.na block by Hiroaki Yamane
Motion creates new resting states. I think of the Big Bang and turning a snow globe upside down. A state of flux makes space for transitioning into a new state of being.
Saturday night, before I flew out, I took a field trip from where I was staying in Brooklyn up to Times Square at 11PM. I watched people come and go from the subway car, revelers on their way to Halloween celebrations, late-night commuters headed home, and those, seemingly searching for an answer to a question they haven't asked, staring off into the distance, earbuds shutting off the world.
I emerged from the station and made my way towards the beacon of light emanating from the square. The area feels like the equivalent of an urban midnight sun. Rather than natural light, the trash-filled streets radiate with the blue glow of millions of pixels and flashing animation.
Times Square is not designed for free motion. It is, instead, optimized for maximal brand engagement. From the massive screens that barrel between 15-second ads to the storefronts with flashing window displays, everything screams "Look at me!!" with an urgent fervor. Barricades are set up around the public art sculptures and stanchions designate waiting areas to get your moment of fame recorded on the big screens. It's weird. Everything around you is moving at a blinding pace, but you aren't allowed to move. Maybe that's the illusion that the space wants you to believe—to think that your freedom comes from the brands and spaces that tease you with flight.
At 11:57pm, exactly 3 minutes before midnight, a vintage black-and-white countdown slowly took over every screen. For the next three minutes, each screen shimmered with a soft blur, ebbing and flowing between a range of muted colors and sharpness. Amorphous blobs danced with shadows and textured curves twinkled. The square grew dark as the screens, which previously screamed with color and animation at maximum brightness, transformed into the soft glow of a home laptop in the dark—more like a paper lamp than an artificial sun. It felt like a digital eclipse—casting the world into darkness for a few brief moments.
~11:58PM during the performance in the middle of Times Square
Around me, people snapped pictures while exclaiming "what the fuck is happening right now?" (much like I imagine people who first see a solar eclipse react). At the end of the three minutes, the screens promptly returned to their regular reel of ads, and some said "that was it?"
That was it. And that pause and break from the normal is all that artist Olafur Eliasson intended with his piece, Lifeworld. In an artist talk the night before, he talked about his desire for spaces that allow for uncertainty and doubt so that people are invited to co-produce the space. Having been in lots of technologist circles that that center agency as the goal of critical technologies, it was surprising to encounter an internationally-recognized artist claim and champion collective agency so prominently in their work.
My own work is deeply interwoven with collective agency. I think the goal of my creative practice is to figure out how to enable grassroots collective agency at scale through both cultural changes and infrastructure changes (both making people aware of what that agency feels like and why they deserve it and creating the tools and foundations to actually realize that agency).
I was curious how effective Olafur's approach would be as a fine-arts approach. The entire premise for this art project is dependent on a twisted set of circumstances. After all, his work is critiquing the very premise of Times Square and the industries that power it, yet the Times Square Art Commission is officially sponsoring this work. It reminds me of Terry Allen's Corporate Head statue, created outside an EY office in Los Angeles1.
image credit Public Art Archive
I wished they had been able to negotiate longer than 3 minutes with Times Square because there wasn't enough time to experience the piece and people's reactions, but that bewildered moment—that "what the fuck" I heard—is a powerful start for any work.
One day while riding the subway I shared a profound moment with a tourist couple's baby. He was standing on the edge of the seat near where I was holding the railing, and suddenly, we met eyes for a deep gaze. From then on, we kept staring at each other. He tried to communicate (in French, so unsuccessfully), so we only had our eyes and hands to talk to each other with. Despite our brief exchange, part of me feels like I know them now.
I spontaneously began an experiment for the rest of the week. While riding public transit, I studied the eyes of strangers around me and tried to avoid looking away if they met my eyes. This was... terrifying, to be frank. As someone who is always afraid of making others uncomfortable, I had to fight every urge to look away. And in return, I found the soul of New York—watching eyes of people of all ages, sizes, colors.
It was a simple experiment, but it felt significant because I gave myself permission to play with strangers in a small and harmless way. Play has mostly been eliminated from our public spaces, and we're afraid of each other. I want to try more experiments that are consequentially harmless but still dance at this boundary of connection (reply with any ideas!).
There are ways to create collective agency in small practices such as these, too. Simple, small trends are the first step in popular culture, actively rewiring our collective consciousness.
Motion and pauses. The interplay between them is what leads to change. Agency often comes in sudden step changes rather than linear increases. Whenever I travel, I find myself caught in a whirlwind of plans and faces and inspiration. I feel overstimulated in the best ways. And then when I return to my home, I hermit and pause and reflect. I whirlwind my mind's snow globe, pause the falling snow, and consider their trajectories.
The throughline of the works I'm documenting here is interventions. Works that interrupt and subvert our everyday expectations to prod us into considering their place in our lives. Practices that break the mundane continuity of commonplace moments and offer us connection in the most unexpected of places. Pregnant pauses that trigger a flurry of life changes.
Are you moving or are you paused?
Recent Updates
TEACHING I'm co-teaching an online class in January for the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC)! it’s called Gift Interfaces and explores how you can incorporate reciprocity in traditional product design to create experiences people care about and of course, we’ll practice different kinds of gifts for our loved ones & communities. There’s a ton of great offerings every season (ive taken two before!). Applications close this weekend!
OBJECTS I released a batch of holiday edition fortune webstones, featuring the ability to leave a gift message for the recipient, and the shop has a new logo by my friend Song You
EXPERIMENT I'm going to try out an experiment for my sponsors where I do a weekly/bi-weekly 10-15 min walk & talk sharing in-progress work and what's on my mind. Also considering a Discord for supporters :) If you're a sponsor, get in touch so I can add you (github doesn't give me everyone's email..) and if you aren't, is this something you'd find valuable?
Also trying to figure out a better platform to handle this.. I’d ideally like to use substack’s audio feature.. but then i guess I would have to add a paid tier rather than using github? advice/preferences/thoughts?
This dispatch was sent to 1143 inboxes. My writing is always free and open, but I am independently funded and appreciate any support you can offer. Consider sharing this with a friend and sponsoring me if you have the means.
Thank you to the 26 people who supported my independent work with a monthly sponsorship last month: Shaobo, Janvi, Jasmine, Raymond, Jacky, Sunil, Jess, Tim, Sarah, Jon, soft networks, Nikhil, Alejandro, Andy, Caro, Riley, Charles, Greg, James, Crystal, Dan, Jonah, Rachel, Gleb, Yorke, and one anonymous donor.
Lovely read, we are truly losing agency and play in the public domain - looking forward to how you experiment with reintroducing us to our agency