Design Concept. Michael Shyu

The project is essentially trying to engage virtual open source public space into a created urban network along Canal Street. It does this by merging typologies of the pedestrian scale with the building as a reading of the building elevation as found in Chinatown and Soho. The application titled O.P.E.N. uses sense networks idea of passive GPS anonymous aggregate data tracking along with the idea of virtual identity projection and allows users to manipulate and engage a series of movable LED screens. The project use of public space; is decentralized along Canal Street. It re-appropriates all of the recently vacated lots in an effort to re-engage the different neighborhoods which are bisected by Canal Street.

The project is the network and much more than the application. The application simply mobilizes the user’s virtual identity along the 4G network and whatever networks that will supercede it.

The project is a series of secondary hubs all tied back to the main hub. The secondary hub act as a series of user defined and user specific spaces. Then network acts as an application programming interface that ties itself to open source projection medium. The websites include Flickr, Deviant Art, Coroflot, Machinima, Facebook, Blogspot, Youtube, 4Chan, twitter, and any other emerging social medium. What will make the space Open Source is the ability for users to upload art, images and movies onto the screens and leave a transient identity for the users that will last 24 hours. With the user uploading the images or videos, they then "tag" the space and become an active participant. They are able to be tracked by the other users while they are on canal street. The secondary hubs initiate the conversation, the network connects the interested parties, the mainhub becomes an aggregate and facilitator on a larger scale.

All of these activities of uploading and engaging tie back to the main hub's projection screen so that the overall network activities have a presence along the street. Whereas the secondary spaces are infill along canal street, the park space becomes its presence while also facilitating the network both in interaction but as well as server. All of the sites will track user activity and project it along the façade of the main hub. The main hub will be a park space encouraging user collaborative space via user manipulated spatial surfaces and networking between the other secondary spaces.