Hacking The Urban Experience

“The Pop Stop” Bubble Wrap Installation

James Brillon (JNB2149)

Jamie Lipson (JCL2209)

Anthony Zampolin, Grace Ng, Tien Chen, Ying Pin

The Tangram Challenge- 

Team: Jiayi Yi, Chengliang Li & Tingying Ma

Cooperators: Nick Norman & Helen Cho

Location: McDonald's, 125th St, Broadway

We continued to explore the possibilities from the installation. Different from assignment 2 we put it in urban context this time. Also we searched for cooperation from McDonald's and a performer to better intervene the site, and thus achieve our goal of hacking the urban experience.

Fu, Jiaqi, and Dingying

NOV 13 - NOV 15

The GSAPP Bubble

We found there are many benches in Avery Hall, where near to the stairs. However we think these spaces are so public that few will use these chairs to do something that they don’t want to do in studios, like make phone call or confide to somebody.

So, we decide to change one of those locations, by our inflatable installation, where locate at 400th floor. Because there is not only a bench, but also a mailbox can be used as a bar. 

When people walked by our bubble, they kept staring at it. But after we add some signs on the door, they started to visit the little bubble.   

Video 2 by Jiayi Yi and Chengliang Li 

Video 1 by Jiayi Yi and Chengliang Li

Aastha, Adam, Maggie, and Dorothy:

November 14, 5:30 PM

We decided we wanted our inflatable to reflect current political tensions. We believed that an inflatable representation of Donald Trump, placed in a highly trafficked area of campus, would elicit strong reactions. We therefore set it up outside of Avery Library. We then projected a video of Trump’s victory speech onto the inflatable.  To encourage passersby to interact with the inflatable, we had to encourage them by writing a few anti-Trump phrases on the surface ourselves. We then left markers scattered at the base of the inflatable for public use. This catalyzed the participation of others.

Some contributed by writing anti-Trump sentiments on the inflatable. Some simply took a moment to step back and look at it. Some people simply laughed and kept walking, and some ignored it. 

Overheard comment: “Is this some kind of protest or counter-protest?”

Inflatable installation by Jiayi Yi and Chengliang Li

Location: Lawn outside of Philosophy Hall, Columbia University

We got inspiration from doughnuts for its continuous space and we thought it will be more interesting to add some “doors” (we used 3 different sized hula hoops) to divide the “ doughnut “. Hula hoops can be move to change the space between each two, so in this way this  inflatable installation contains countless possibilities (from one huge space to 3 small spaces).

Location No.1: 112th street and Broadway, in front of Tom’s restaurant.

Location No.2: 106th street and Broadway, in front of Morton Williams Supermarket.

We think LinkNYC doesn’t really link to local life, so we tried to build connection between it and local business.

At the beginning, we plan to use the Link NYC at Tom’s restaurant, which has a blank screen, as a selfie light for the Halloween night. So we putted a poster on the big screen to gather people, but we were stopped by police officers.

However, we found the reflection of light on the balloons built another visual connection between LinkNYC and local business.