Design-Build Studio Enchants Camden With “Ourself” (Pt.3)

New American Public Art (NAPA) is a multidisciplinary design-build studio working at the forefront of public space and art. This is the third in a three part series, covering the construction phase of the “Ourself” project. P1. 1 can be read here and Pt. 2 can be read here.

^{“Ourself” crosses the bridge from Philadelphia to Camden}

Part one of this three part series covers the genesis of the project, part two covers the construction process and this third installment looks at the implementation and interactive aspects of “Ourself”.


Once the project construction was completed at NextFab’s Washington Avenue location, the pieces had to be carefully transported across the Delaware river to Camden, NJ. This required the use of a flatbed semi truck due to the size and weight of the sculptural pieces.

Once the pieces had arrived safely and were unloaded from the truck, they were positioned and assembled. The process went smoothly but was still a lot of work.

The park that serves as the installation site was filled throughout the day with a broad sampling of the community ranging from politicians and public servants (the park is in front of City Hall in Camden) to the homeless. There was curiosity, excitement and even a sense of local ownership and pride once the project was explained. This feedback, before power had even been run to the site, was a good early indicator of the success of the project in the community.

Public art in the form of traditional sculptures and murals has an immediately understandable context. For the most part, it will be liked, disliked or ignored, but interactive public art is more complex, it requires engagement. Without a concrete context, questions arise. What is it? Why is it here? What do I do with it? The context is not taken for granted and the work itself needs to invite the public to investigate and then it needs to answer these questions.

NAPA’s Bevan Weissman explains the team’s approach to interactive public art, “The piece needs to be beautiful, understandable, and rewarding. We picture each person approaching our installations completely uninformed. The sculpture has to stand on its own, using consistent internal logic and structure to compel people to interact with it. People are not prepared for ‘artful’ moments the same way they are in the gallery, so we design our sculptures to lure you in and provide an experience.”

The application of these ideas in relation to the Ourself project, is first conveyed through material choices – sanded and varnished wood that is smooth to the touch (warm and inviting), and a mirror which lures the observer in, compelling reflection.

In order to be understandable and intuitive to the observer, Weissman explains, “People innately understand the ramps up to the central platform as a welcome mat. The two illuminated mirrors facing each other, visible as people approach the sculpture, also provide an attraction factor – people love looking at themselves.”

To reward the curious participant, the platform initiates a response, a greeting of sorts. The lights surrounding the mirror glow brighter and the background noise emanating from the sculpture is interrupted by the chime of a bell. Then, audio stories begin to play. These stories are taken from interviews with local residents, describing the little joys and inspirations that get them through the day.

“There is a very obvious link between cause and effect: step on the platform, set off the bell and turn up the lights. Step off the platform, the voices vanish into background noise and the lights dim. We have seen many installations where cause and effect are not as clear. Visualizations or projections that seem random or don’t respond to your motion in obvious ways. When cause and effect are decoupled, people lose the sense of agency they have to change the condition of the sculpture. Retaining that agency is critical, and knowing that you can turn those stories on or off with a hop skip and a jump is a clear reward for your curious exploration of this weird sculpture,” continues Weissman.

From the inception of a project, the NAPA team asks, “how and why will people interact with this?”. That question drives the design process. For “Ourself”, the design process was manifest in multiple dimensions, both physical and temporal.

Perhaps the most rudimentary physical aspect is scale. NAPA designs art for people; but people, ultimately, are also a component of the design. “We deliberated about the height of the mirrors and the overall size of the sculpture to be approachable on a human scale, but still very noticeable in the context of surrounding buildings, trees, and other factors. Things can look large in a CAD model or in the studio, but shrink when placed outside in the real world. We debated making the mirrors 8′ tall instead of 10′, but decided the scale was too diminutive. The extra two feet give the sculpture an enhanced stature and also make it taller than an outstretched arm, pushing it just out of our grasp into a slightly higher realm,” relays Weissman.

The space between the mirrors is both airy and intimate. It feels open but at the same time private.

The temporal aspect is expressed in both the interactive lighting and the sound. Light and sound in public spaces can be difficult, as there is invariably competition with the surroundings. Making the audio directional enough to be contained within the perimeter of the piece and also loud enough to hear while approaching but not too loud inside the piece required some thought and engineering. The team chose to use tactile transducers as the audio drivers, rather than conventional cone speakers. Tactile transducers create sound through vibration and resonance in surfaces as opposed to pushing air like a traditional speaker. The transducers are mounted on the wooden deck, turning the deck surface into a speaker. The vibrations created will also resonate through bone, making the human body a speaker of sorts. The sound becomes uniquely localized yet non-directional. The participant feels the sound.

In order to make not only the object, but the space dynamic, the piece had to be as responsive as the observer. This is what makes the work truly interactive.

To achieve this a complex sensor system had to be designed. “It’s subtle, but the lights around the mirrors [become brighter] as the sculpture detects your motion. Microwave sensors are hidden beneath the wooden facade of the towers. Unlike PIR sensors (passive infrared motion detectors as commonly used in alarm and motion detection lighting), microwave sensors can also detect motion through various interfering surfaces. So we can place them behind wood and keep them invisible, and no sensors detract from the clean lines and smooth surfaces of the sculpture,” says Weissman.

After the microwave sensors and glowing lights have drawn the participant into the space, the deck sensors are activated. The deck floats on weight sensors which, rather than acting as a trigger, maintain an “on” state as long as they are engaged. Weissman continues, “These provide a continuous reading when they’re activated, so we could not only tell when people entered the sculpture, but that they were still there. We programmed the interaction accordingly, so that stories would continue playing as long as you stood on the platform. You wouldn’t have to step off and back on again to reactivate it.”

Enrique Rivera, the Project Manager from Cooper’s Ferry explains the overwhelmingly positive community feedback, “It’s always awesome to see people interact with it for the first time. It’s even better when people recognize the voices coming from the installation. Their faces when the sound plays are priceless. People are also taking the motivational sound bites to heart. On many occasions I’ve seen children repeat what they heard from the installation to their parents or friends.”

Weissman summarizes the experience, “So, all together, an uninformed person saw a weird or interesting object, approached it out of curiosity and dared to enter the portal. Now protected within a semi-enclosed environment, infinite reflections arc away from them and a loud clear voice captivates them with a story. They can get lost staring at their images while listening to the narrator, or they can dash off and grab a friend to share their discovery. They can even jump on and off the platform over and over to hear the sound of that beautiful bell – and we have seen many kids do just that. 
The interaction might seem simple and obvious in retrospect, but a lot of thought and deliberation went in up front to make it that way.”

So what’s next for NAPA?

“We will be designing, fabricating and installing a work we call ‘Kempelen’s Owls’,” replies Dan Sternof Beyer, referencing their next project in Austin, Texas, “This project consists of two 10′ owls, across an intersection from each other. The public can clandestinely turn a hidden railing under the seating element of the work, to turn the owls heads. Thus, an informed local can scare uninformed tourists by tracking them with the huge owl’s stare.”

^{Ourself from New American Public Art on Vimeo.}

Do you want to interact with New American Public Art’s unique sculpture in person? Map It! or check out their website for other projects.

If you missed Pt.1 and Pt. 2 of this series, you can check them out here: Ourself Blog Pt.1 and Ourself Blog Pt.2.

Do you have your own ambitious plans for a unique sculpture or installation? Come in for a tour and learn how NextFab can help.