Visualizing Ideas: New York City in Pastiche

PSFK introduced me to something rather interesting. The project itself can be found at Christian Marc Schmidt’s website. It is described as a collective composition of New York City which visually combines the geographic neighborhoods of New York with the digitally communicated ideas floating around in the blogosphere. This piece culminates with the virtual/verbal representation of New York organized by its many neighborhoods.

Pastiche—A Collective Composition of New York City, by Ivan Safrin & Christian Marc Schmidt from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

My first thought when stumbling on this piece was a flash back to good old Jay Gould and his Oral History of the World. But the difference here is this piece is fundamentally written by the world and does actually exist. It most certainly is art of the communal and experiential kind, harking back to the days of the Dadas who, through those questionable Cadavre Exquise, formed works of art not centered on the talents of any one person but existing through the collaboration of the group. That is the heart of this project and though it has its creators: Ivan Safrin and Christian Marc Schmidt, it can only exist through the contributions of the blogosphere.
thoughts and reactions…

-huysmans