street

The Houston Fence is a temporary outdoor installation on chain-link fences inspired by QR code barcode patterns. It is located at the intersection of Broadway and Houston in New York City, a crossroads notorious for its heavy traffic. The project was built as a result of a commission to improve fences put in place for a major street infrastructure construction project.

The project's blog can be accessed by mobile devices by means of QR code stickers placed on the fences.

The team behind the project is composed by Carolina Cisneros, Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena and Mateo Pintó, the same group that made the Fulton Fence previously.

Back in November i was at Medialab Prado in Madrid to visit the Visualizar workshop and i had the pleasure to hear the talk that Juan Freire gave there. I was really looking forward to know better about the thoughts of someone whose keen observation on open knowledge, digital culture and everyware'd city i was following with interest for some time. Juan Freire is one of the very very few people who keep track of what is written in the field of ubiquitous computing, free software and technology but who would also hang around with media art curators and mingle with the hackers and the urbanists. And his everyday job doesn't have much to do with all of the above. He has a PhD in Biology, he is Associate Professor and Coordinator research group at University of Corunna.

The Fulton Fence is a temporary installation in Fulton Street, New York City on view through the spring of 2008. The project is a response to the effects of development; in particular the visual pollution created by the presence of construction sites in a small concentrated area.

The project is also online as a 'digital' site and is linked to the street intervention by signs that show a mobile barcode and a URL which can be accesed by any mobile internet-enabled device.

This website parallels the physical intervention in lower Manhattan, and explores the notion of "site" as both location and information such as the project's process, localized widgets, street history and visiting traffic statistics among others.