Recently, we had the pleasure of hosting the NYC Arts, Culture and Technology Meetup at our offices in the Big Apple. The theme at this particular gathering was ‘Arts, Tech & the City,’ explained the group’s founder, Julia Kaganskiy:
“This month we're taking a look at the various ways technology and the arts are informing our relationship to the cities we live in. From collaborative storytelling projects, to creative data visualizations, to location-based projects, these fields intersect over and over again and entwine to give us new ways of experiencing and understanding our urban lives.”
Evidently this theme is a popular one amongst New Yorkers: so popular, in fact, that the event sold-out in less than 10 minutes -- a new record!
#artsTech attendees begin to settle into their seats
After Julia welcomed everyone, I started us off by giving a presentation about Google Places, and invited attendees to join a reviewing challenge through which one lucky participant could win brunch for 8 people at Essex Restaurant, a Lower East Side favorite.
Next came a presentation from Carina Molnar of City Atlas, a project of the The Institute of Sustainable Cities (CISC) at CUNY’s Hunter College and Artist as Citizen. As Molnar explained, City Atlas is a bottom-up sustainability plan that gives average citizens (as well as experts) a platform to design and share sustainability initiatives for New York City.
We also heard from Ian Curry, the Director of Interaction Design at Local Projects. Local Projects has served as the interaction designers for a number of fascinating projects, for instance StoryCorps (a nationwide oral history initiative). They’re also the co-lead designers for the National 9/11 Museum at ground zero.
That’s me, Esther, in the red dress.
Annie Wachnicki from the New Museum was also on hand to talk about their Festival of Ideas for the New City, a collaboration of numerous Downtown organizations that work together “to harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore ideas that will shape it.” This year, the festival included three days of programming, a street festival along the Bowery and 80+ independent projects and public events.
Finally, we were thrilled to hear fellow Googler Alexander Chen talk about MTA.me, his project that transformed the NYC subway system into a string instrument. We also found out that MTA.me was a precursor to the incredibly popular Les Paul Google Doodle, part of Chen’s work at the Google Creative Lab.
We want to thank everyone who came out to what was a truly special evening-- it was absolutely wonderful to hear about all of the creative, noteworthy projects that are taking hold here in New York City. Our city’s future is bright, no doubt about it.
(P.S. Interested in taking part in a future Google New York community activity? Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date.)
Posted by Esther Brown, Manhattan community manager
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