The Public Utteraton Machines: Recording What People Think of Public Art in New York City

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 48-50
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hackemann

In 2015–2016 the author installed interactive public artworks on sidewalks in Brooklyn and Queens using ordinary city permits. The locations were chosen in counterbalance to the dominant choices of location for public art in New York, which tends to be placed in Manhattan or other tourist-concentrated areas. The works are entitled the Public Utteraton Machines and enable passersby to utter their opinions about other public art in the city as well as art’s role in society. The device’s earpiece recorded over 100 open-ended narratives and 391 responses to quantitative data questions via an integrated e-paper display screen. This public art project combines social practice with object-based public art into a conceptual public art practice that forms a commons or civic art. Sound archives of the responses can be found at local libraries in Queens and Brooklyn and at http://utteraton.com/ .

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Ryan P. McDonough ◽  
Paul J. Miranti ◽  
Michael P. Schoderbek

ABSTRACT This paper examines the administrative and accounting reforms coordinated by Herman A. Metz around the turn of the 20th century in New York City. Reform efforts were motivated by deficiencies in administering New York City's finances, including a lack of internal control over monetary resources and operational activities, and opaque financial reports. The activities of Comptroller Metz, who collaborated with institutions such as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, were paramount in initiating and implementing the administrative and accounting reforms in the city, which contributed to reform efforts across the country. Metz promoted the adoption of functional cost classifications for city departments, developed flowcharts for improved transaction processing, strengthened internal controls, and published the 1909 Manual of Accounting and Business Procedure of the City of New York, which laid the groundwork for transparent financial reports capable of providing vital information about the city's activities and subsidiary units. JEL Classifications: H72, M41, N91. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
María F. Carrascal Pérez

<p>Given its positive economic, social and urban impact, even with low-cost or low-tech materialization, the urban creativity encouraged by the arts is of great interest today. This narrative reviews one of the most prolific careers in this regard addressing the pioneering work by Doris C. Freedman. The late 1960s and the 1970s, in the context of two financial crises, saw a groundbreaking effort to formalize innovative artistic programs that recycled the obsolete city and integrated local communities in the processes. Doris C. Freedman was the first director of NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the Public Arts Council, and leader of the organization City Walls. These institutions promoted an unprecedented improvement of the public urban life through the cultural action. Such experiences led Freedman to the conception of her last project, the relevant and, still, ongoing Public Art Fund of New York City. This article focuses on her early professional years, when she began and consolidated herself in the task of legitimizing art as an urban instrument for shaping the city. This research provides a contextualized critical analysis on Freedman’s less-known experimental projects before the foundation of the Public Art Fund, enabling an extraordinary source of inspiration for a current creative city-making.</p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (6) ◽  
pp. 408-412

At first glance, James Yamada's Our Starry Night, on view at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in New York City from April to October 2008, is a black, twelve-foot-tall sculpture with 1900 unlit colored LED lights on its two flat surfaces (see photograph 1). When one passes through the sculpture's rectangular passageway, however, patterns of light appear. The explanation, on a nearby plaque and the Public Art Fund Project Web site, states: “When visitors walk through the portal in the piece, they trigger a metal detector hidden inside the structure's casing. This activates the LED lights that perforate the exterior of the sculpture. Common everyday metal objects such as cell phones, keys, belts, jewelry, cameras, computers, and the like will trigger the lights; the luminosity and the light patterns seen in the piece will correspond to the quantity of metal detected. Our Starry Night is literally activated by the public, reinforcing the notion that art—and particularly public art—is dependent on the people around it.” Watching the colored patterns appear led Brigitte Bentele to consider some mathematical questions. She asked a friend to help by walking through the passageway numerous times.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
ROBERT R. GRIMES

AbstractIn the 1850s, the residents of, and visitors to, New York City experienced a world of rapid and sometimes chaotic change. Various reform movements—including Temperance, Abolition, and Women's Rights—became stronger and more widely known through various media. In 1853 a simple story published in the pages of the New York Tribune took the city by storm. “Hot Corn,” the story of Little Katy, a child peddler, is ostensibly a temperance tale, but something made the story resonate among the public. Soon minstrel songs, sheet music, lectures, novels, and melodramas followed, purporting to herald a new moral crusade against drunkenness, poverty, and child abuse, paralleling Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Abolition movement. Within eighteen months, however, the “Hot Corn” phenomenon had faded almost as quickly as it had begun.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
Thomas Wide
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  

AbstractThomas Wide visits a recent exhibition on the history of New York City


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-110
Author(s):  
Sweta Chakraborty ◽  
Naomi Creutzfeldt-Banda

Saturday, 18 December 2010 was the first of a two day complete closure of all London area airports due to freezing temperatures and approximately five inches of snow. A week later on December 26th, New York City area airports closed in a similar manner from the sixth largest snowstorm in NYC history, blanketing the city approximately twenty inches of snow. Both storms grounded flights for days, and resulted in severe delays long after the snow stopped falling. Both London and NYC area airports produced risk communications to explain the necessity for the closures and delays. This short flash news report examines, in turn, the risk communications presented during the airport closures. A background is provided to understand how the risk perceptions differ between London and NYC publics. Finally, it compares and contrasts the perceptions of the decision making process and outcomes of the closures, which continue to accumulate economic and social impacts.


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