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New York City Multisensory Sculpture, 2024
Plastic, paint, 8MB speaker, canvas

I had a variety of inspirations for this piece, the three main ones being:

(1) living in Los Angeles;
(2) the paradox of modern day maps as more interactive and digitized than ever, and yet dissociating us from the very places they represent; and
(3) synesthesia

While a map is a “diagram or collection of data showing the spatial arrangement or distribution of something over an area,” I wondered how far I could take this classic interpretation and ossify it into a work of art that makes us reconceptualize the idea of “place” and existing or interacting with “place”.

The questions I kept coming back to were: can we experience a place without physically being there or actually seeing it? Can this be achieved without the use of AR/VR? How can we use an age-old design (maps/cartography) in a unique way to explore these questions?

I began by prototyping with cardboard, imagining what this layout could look like and how I could house speakers that would contain the found sound from the different places I explored throughout NYC. In the final iteration of my project, I 3D printed these textured boxes put speakers into them. By pressing a button on each box, you can hear what the place sounds like and touch the textures on top of the boxes, experiencing these places through sound and touch.
     

This was an exploration in 3D printing; I learned how to use Blender to import scans of places and to edit these textures into the boxes that would house the speakers. This inspired my interest in 3D modeling and printing, bringing digital projects into the real world, for both useful and artistic purposes.

These questions I was asking ultimately resulted in an experiential, abstracted “map” of NYC through found sound, textures, and items that are representative of these places. I 3D scanned iconic monuments representative of NYC: the text on the World Trade Center memorial, the bull on Wall Street, the subway floor, Washington Square Park Monument, and the Grand Central clock.


Ultimately, this is a case study on what is lost through digital interventions and modern techniques, and conversely, what is gained through traditional and/or analogue designs. You can learn more about this project here.