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Exploring the interesting things that make our world work, and the people that make them happen.
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New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots »
It’s always interesting to see how cities repurpose pieces of out-dated infrastructure. Payphones in the city don’t go completely unused, but it’s an elegant solution to upgrade these kiosks of outmoded communication so that they’re useful in a modern, internet-centric city and culture.
I’m also sympathetic to free internet hotspots in cities after spending countless hours in the basement of a Starbucks in London trying to book a hostel reservation last summer. This would be a lot easier.
It’s about to be over, the idea that a car can runs free. Those days are about to close.
It’s a little like making a model of New York City at the turn of the last century and you’re modeling horse buggies everywere and then automobile is about to arrive. Something else is about to arrive.
This is a project that dramatically recreates the overwhelming experience lots of cars moving very quickly in a twisted, complicated infrastructure of roads, buildings and rails. All of the moving parts contribute to the sculpture’s “noise pollution,” mimicking the effects of real cars in the real world.
It was about trying to evoke the energy of the city.
And then the stillness that follows when the whole thing turns off.
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In all my 18 years of living in Canadian cities other than Toronto before moving here, I never once came myself. It’s a fine place to live, I was to discover, but who’d want to visit? Canadian National’s got nothing on Eiffel; St. Lawrence Market’s fine, but it’s no Pike Place, or even Stuttgart Market Hall. We’re clean, but not as clean as almost anywhere in Germany, Qatar or Singapore. Et cetera, et cetera. So I started asking the tourists, and the answers I consistently got from Europeans in particular—both at home and when I was traveling and would respond to the inevitable “You’re from Toronto? I love Toronto” with a persistent “Why?”—made me rethink the way I judge cities. They told me, almost every time I asked, that they liked how new everything was.
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