My first big public art piece is up: Bryant Park in Motion, co-created with four students — Brett Murphy, Igal Nassima, Eyal Ohana, and Molly Schwartz — at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), supported by MTA Arts for Transit and Submedia. The piece was created at no cost to the MTA.

BPIM will be on display March 2010 at the base of the northeast entrance/exit stairs to the 42nd St Bryant Park subway station. The works consist of animations activated by viewers motion past the display, recalling zoetropes, early animation devices, and the MTA’s own Masstransiscope. As with Summ Kunce’s nearby permanent installation, Under Bryant Park, also commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit, each animation is inspired by a facet of Bryant Park as imagined by the artists. The images portray the park from below the surface to above the skyline; from nature to fashion, recreation, and the famed carousel; from season to season; and from concrete to abstract, always inviting the viewer to participate, wonder, and play.

After almost two years of preparation, a lot had to happen in the last minute in a blizzard. Besides their creative work, each student contributed some critical element without which the project couldn’t have been completed.

If you’re near Manhattan, take a look, invite your friends. If you need help finding it, let me know. Here are installation pictures and Arts for Transit’s page for it. Note: The beauty and the challenge of the medium is that it’s impossible to capture how cool it looks except in person, so online representations don’t show the real thing.

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