The mural was conceived as a piece of the Connective Corridor, which seeks to relink Syracuse University with the downtown through a combination of signage, pedestrian friendly infrastructure, and interactive installations. While the S.Alt City mural itself is static, viewers are directed to websites with live feed updates, including one that announces events sponsored by local arts organizations, including the Everson Museum, Erie Canal Museum, Artrage, and Lightwork. The QR links are also flexible: they can be changed or updated as new institutions emerge. The mural engages two critical issues in design—firstly, the use of new media and second, the problem of how to instigate urban life in the post industrial city..
While QR codes have become ubiquitous in advertising and branding, they have yet to be exploited in more artistic or experimental ways. Mobile devices have changed the way we navigate cities, but have barely affected the built environment itself. S.Alt City, like other recent QR mosaics such as the Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, asks how mobile devices might allow city dwellers to engage our surroundings in new and different ways.
Secondly, by recasting a blank urban wall and an adjacent parking lot as a design opportunity, S.Alt City explores how the existing built landscapes of post industrial cities can be repurposed. Such underutilized spaces are ubiquitous in the contemporary city—voids of activity, not blighted enough to be torn down, but not aesthetically or programmatically rich enough to support the downtown as a vibrant pedestrian environment.
If the car was the primary tool that shaped cities in the 20th century—often inadvertently— it is our job as designers to question how the primary “transportation device” – ie, mobile media, might reshape our cities in positive and meaningful ways.
While the Internet has made information ubiquitous, projects like S.Alt City suggest that new technologies can also be deployed in hyper-local ways that allow pedestrians to access the invisible layers within specific and concrete places.
Project Credits: A public art project by Cheng+Snyder
Brett Snyder, Principal in charge
Project Team: Samuel Chertock Shi Chen Jesse Ganes Ari Minelli Jeff Nedelka Gabriel Nolle Dalton Iannuzzo Zachary Ranieri Trevor Schur
For more information go to Facebook.Com/Saltcityproject
Photo: salt blocks, salt mills, a pump house, and salt barge. Geddes, NY, circa 1870. Courtesy of The Erie Canal Museum, Syracuse, New York www.eriecanalmuseum.org
Generous support has been provided by the following: The Connective Corridor The Erie Canal Museum M. Lemp Jewelers Syracuse University: School of Architecture
