houston fence 2008
secret data barrier
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location Houston Street and Broadway, New York. USA
type Temporary art installation
sponsors Downtown Alliance and Department of Design and Construction DDC as part of Re:Construction public art program
team Mateo Pintó, Carolina Cisneros, Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena
collaborators Jorge Tutiven, Sham Lay, Leah Manning, Luan Chang, Radis Jenethat, Maria Rojas, David Ricardo Davila, Darrin Amellio, Ana Changco, Fernando Ramirez, Luciano Landaeta, Jessica Zyla, Varsha Patel, Leah Gazit, Jazz Kalirai, Ana Maria Duran, Paula Young, Nicole Beattie, Sara Valente, Marcelo Ertorteguy, Catherine Nguyen, Maia Amellio
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Inspired by QR code patterns, the project occupied all four corners of the intersection of Broadway and Houston Street. Each corner was identified with a color—green, yellow, blue or orange—that related to the features of the site and the city’s traffic language. Meant to be viewed at different scales and speeds of movement (pedestrian, car, and bike) these two-sided fence intervention used put-in plastic cups as ‘pixels’ scattered to create a permeable pattern that partially filled 60 chain-link fences set up along 480 feet on Houston Street as a safety barrier.
QR codes placed in some of the cups allowed pedestrians to access the houstonfence.mobi blog by scanning them with a mobile phone. The blog documented the evolution of this data-barrier and its interactions with the public and the city.
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