Drawing / Proposal

conversing / projecting syracuse

1. The action of living or having one's being in a place or among persons. Also fig. of one's spiritual being. Obs.

2. The action of consorting or having dealings with others; living together; commerce, intercourse, society, intimacy. Obs.

7. a. Interchange of thoughts and words; familiar discourse or talk.

Concept_

Conversations occur simultaneously at the urban scale; on a broad range of topics and locations. Mobile communication transfers face-to-face conversations to information exchange, with its own content and signifiers. Recombining the opportunities afforded by mobile technology into a located entity which enlivens urban experience.

Hybrid conversations; which incorporate elements of face to face conversation with the rapidity and convenience of the TXT message will be generated from an initial question. The elements which are used for the installation are the existing surface(s) at the Fayette and Warren St Park; bus stops; and telephone booths throughout the city.

Questions are posed at the infrastructural input points, and TXT responses are fed into a projection, which displays them, and feeds TXTs which end in a question mark (?) back to the input points to begin new chains of conversation. After a new question is posed, the collected responses, displayed as a series of layers, are saved and displayed online, for documentation and further discussion.

The display is set up as a running series of messages, which slowly aggregate on the projection, which are superimposed over the previous messages; the opacity of the individual message fades over time. This way, depending on the rate of incoming messages, the legibility and effect of the individual message changes in response to the broader conversation (similar to “real” conversation – messages can be lost in the crowd – as civil conversation fades to a cacophony of voices.

Thus, by linking dispersed input/ display points into a singular place, the aggregation of inputs begins to create conversive art - enlivening + creating a context for conversation in / on / about syracuse.