Angus McCullough ’10, an art studio major concentrating in architecture, was featured in The New York Times today in a review of the show, “Intersections: The Grand Concourse Beyond 100,” which opened Sunday at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. “Intersections” is the result of a nine-month competition sponsored by the museum and the Design Trust for Public Space. It features seven visions for the future of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, including one designed by McCullough.
From the review:
Angus McCullough, a senior at Wesleyan University, takes a more subversive approach. His proposal, “Live Wired,” would create video and audio installations in strategic points along the Concourse. A 24-hour image of the sky would be projected onto platform ceilings in nearby subway stations so that people underground could see the weather outside — a potentially mesmerizing way to pass the time if you’ve just missed a train. Meanwhile another video of people milling around on the platforms below would be projected onto the Concourse’s sidewalks. Aside from its voyeuristic appeal, the system would allow pedestrians to keep an eye out for an approaching subway train.
Other aspects of this design are a bit simplistic. Mr. McCullough, for example, imagines projecting unfolding Yankees games onto the Concourse’s sidewalks, and mounting microphones and loudspeakers outside bodegas to broadcast fragments of conversations as people walk by. Still, the concept touches on a critical urban subject: the intensifying battle between transparency and privacy in the public realm.
The Times was far from the first news source to cover McCullough’s proposal, however— “Live Wired” has already been the subject of much Wesleyan press praise. To learn more about the evolution of McCullough’s project, check out previous articles in the Argus and The Wesleyan Connection.