Decentral Eyes

"Decentral Eyes" was a proposal designed for an IBM intensive centered around City Forward and the question of how publicly-accessible data will shape spaces and citizens. Our site was 125th St. and Broadway, in Manhattan. Our project addressed issues of contested space/conflicting interests in the area, as well as the prevalence of broken-down information interfaces. We decided to use the elevated subway station as an inversion of the current paradigm of smart cities, turning it into a kind of "people's control tower" in which citizens could see data laid over their city and make serendipitous data correlations that others might not see. Through actions that are both implicit (e.g. gestural/eye-tracking) and explicit (e.g. texting the system to notify concered parties), our system is one that uses public space and public data to encourage critical thinking and closing the loop between citizen concern and action.

See larger versions of the boards here (first and second).

Created with Christo de Klerk and Richard Angus Duff.