My finals week was spent not taking final exams or writing final lesson plans, but rather in the throes of installing our interactive space for Please Generate Art. I tallied up the hours from creation to installation, and to build the 60′ x 8′ of urban/suburban/rural landscapes took exactly 26 hours. I have to admit that the absolute best part of the experience was watching people interact with our piece. As people entered, we told them they could make a permanent change to the environment with a sticker or a non-permanent change to the space by manipulating the projections. It was very interesting to me how many people took the “easy” way with the stickers, even though their choice could not be removed once added to the wall. Below are some of my favorite photos of the entire process. Enjoy!

Before

I was terrified to see how much space we had to fill when we first saw the area sans walls. The Conaway Center is a beautiful and cavernous space on Columbia’s campus.

Yoga in the City

My friend Rachel displays some of her amazing yoga skills while we map out the city on the floor of the gallery space. I totally built the walls around her!

Install

Sarah McHugh and I begin the arduous process of selecting the perfect space for each building. The buildings were held up by a combination of hot glue, duct tape, and love.

Install

The suburbs are laid out, and we begin to cluster the corn fields. The hardest part of the install was determining how much space to leave between the city, the suburbs, and the farm land.

Farm Detail

A close up shot of the cardboard barn. This was my favorite part of the whole world.

Final Product

We finished installing the cardboard world around 11pm the night before the show. We were the last people in the Conaway Center that evening!

We Generate Our Own Environment

Our very first participants decide to impact the environment permanently with stickers.

High School Interaction with PGA

A teenage boy adds non-permanent graffiti to our environment. He spent over thirty minutes creating his projection and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking his photo with it.

We Generate Our Own Environment

I enjoy the fruits of our labor. Have an excellent summer everyone! I’ll be around to share some of the summer experience in the Education department.