Holoffiti Ethnography

Tai Uong New Black Ethnographies Professor McGlotten 12/15/17

"Graffiti writing breaks the hegemonic hold of corporate/governmental style over the urban environment and the situations of daily life. As a form of aesthetic sabotage, it interrupts the pleasant, efficient uniformity of "planned" urban space and predictable urban living. For the writers, graffiti disrupts the lived experience of mass culture, the passivity of mediated consumption.” - Jeff Ferrell, Crimes of Style The Thirty-Year Rains marked a decisive change in the history New York City. With the creation of suspended boroughs in the upper districts, and underwater, glassed-in neighborhoods making up the lower districts, it appeared the city had finally found a way to prevail against the great floods. Now, nearly a decade after The Rains and the creation of the districts, I would like to conduct an ethnographic research on “holoffiti” culture in New York City.

Emerging from SoPaleo Bronx no more than two years ago, holoffiti is an art form that developed out of the once wide-spread, “graffiti”, in which holograms depicting social or political scenes, sayings, or images are projected in public areas for varying amounts of time. I will be conducting my fieldwork in SoPaleo Bronx, working with the group of artists who founded holofitti, and whose work calls attention to the many injustices currently happening in the lower districts. Through in-depth observation, interviews, and working alongside these artists as they create their holographic art, I hope to learn the processes that go into making a display, what they hope to achieve by doing this, and if they have any visions for the future of holoffiti. Living in SoPaleo Bronx will deepen my understanding of life in one of the lower districts compared to how we live in the upper districts.

I will focus on three key themes throughout my research. The first will be art, and how dialogue can be created through it. The second will be the process, meaning, and intention that goes into creating holoffiti. And the last will be race relations between the upper and lower districts, as the upper houses a majority of wealthy white people, while poorer minorities were relegated to the lower ones.

Field Notes: April 11th, 2108 -It wasn’t my first time in the lower districts, but it was my first time in SoPaleo Bronx.

-Elijah Harris, one of the co-founders of the holoffiti moment, picked me up from one of the transport tubes that connects the upper and lower districts. He arrived in one of those old gas powered cars.

I was surprised by his vehicle because those are pretty much nonexistent in the upper districts.

For the most part, we all made the switch to magnetized gliders after Doc Hansen’s Airflow and Pollution report of 2090 revealed the health risks associated with long-term exposure to gasoline-powered car exhaust. I also noted the differences in smell and quality of the air as soon as I exited the tube.

-Elijah brought me to the studio, located on the fifth floor of an old office building, and introduced me to his co-founder, Andre Bell, along with two other members of their team, José and Michaela. Their space looked like a mix between an artist's studio and a laboratory. Brick walls with stained glass windows stood behind the rows of gadgets they had. I recognized some like visible light dividers and holographic projectors, but others seemed completely foreign to me.

Large black cables, and multi-colored wires lined the ceiling, weaving in and out of different ports in the walls, some connecting to a group of computers that looked as if someone had tried

to build them out of spare parts. In the back corner there was a bookcase behind a large table with some stools around it, with what looked to be blueprints littering the surface.

My first impression of their studio was that it had so much personality. All the parts were mismatched and shouldn’t have fit together, but they did. The scattered about plans and sketches of possible future projects showed that these were artists who had visions for their work and wouldn’t stop until they perfected what they wanted to say. Not only the room, but the whole building had such character. An old, classically styled brick building with graffiti on the outside. You could tell it was well lived-in, held history within its walls. It was everything the upper districts weren’t.

Interview with Elijah Harris: I sat down with Elijah at the planning table they have in their studio. Andre, José, and Michaela worked around us on their various projects. The sounds of keyboards, holographic materialization, and Marvin Gaye filled the room as we fell into easy conversation. I asked first about how the idea of “holoffiti” even came about. He looked towards the rendering table Andre was working at.

“Well, it was a joint vision me and Andre had shared. We were both born only a few years after the rains started, so we remember a time before the upper and lower districts were created. I remember watching those who could, separate themselves from us, well, more than they already had at least. They built the floating utopias they always dreamed of- rich, white, elitist- while those who couldn’t afford to build or rent struggled below in the floods. Eventually, they built the glass casing to protect us, but by doing also sealed the fate of everyone on the ground. Now there was a physical divider between the rich and the poor, and we struggled down here. We’re still struggling down here. These aren’t conditions in which people should live, but the people in charge don’t care, the uppers don’t care, no one cares, they saved us from the floods, so their good deed is done and they never have to look back. But me and Andre weren’t

okay with that, we needed them to look back, we wanted to give them no choice but to have to look back. Our goal was to create something to remind uppers that we’re still down here, and things aren’t okay. We wanted to show them we wouldn’t be swept under the rug or forgotten. It tooks weeks of spit-balling ideas back and forth for one of us to come up with something. I happened to be reading a book about street art one day and came across a quote that talked about how graffiti is a form of aesthetic sabotage that interrupts the uniformity of daily life, and I loved it, that was really what set everything in motion. I showed it to Andre and he was just as crazy about it. We knew we wanted to do something related to graffiti, but we didn’t want to just spray paint a building, they could just paint over that, we wanted something bigger, something they had no choice but to look at. Interestingly enough Andre came up with the idea to use holograms while playing with his daughter. He was controlling one of those holographic kids’ toys and said his daughter was obsessed with it. She treated the hologram like it was really alive and in the room with them and couldn’t stop looking at the thing. He told me we needed to incorporate holograms, and I loved the idea. After a few days spent working out the details, holoffiti was born, and we’ve been trying to expand it ever since.”

He relayed his story taking almost no breaths. I didn’t dare interrupt until I was sure he was finished, in an attempt to record his entire stream of consciousness. When he spoke I could feel his passion for this project. It wasn’t just about making a statement, it was about making a change.

“I think you’ve done a great job bringing your vision to life.” I told him.

“Thank you.”

“In fact, I was lucky enough to see one of your pieces on display, and was completely blown away by how detailed the thing was. It was so intricate and engaging. I wanted to know what the process behind creating a piece of holoffiti looks like.”

He let out a small laugh.

“It definitely takes a lot of time and planning, that’s for sure. First, we have to establish exactly what we want our display to say, and how it will look- right down to the pixel. We take into account current events from both the upper and lower districts in order to unite the two through something that is mutually understood. And then we have all the technical work, which is done through extensive programming, directional projection, and reality animation. It’s kind of a strange intersection between creative and critical thinking, we like to call it “engineering art”.

“Can I just say, as someone who knows very little about holograms, this all sounds very impressive.” I admitted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know half the stuff I do now if it weren’t for those two.”

He pointed to the section of computers in which José and Michaela sat furiously typing away.

“What are their roles?”

“In the simplest terms- tech expert and animator. I’d known Michaela for years and knew she was a great computer animator, so we contacted her as soon as we finished developing a holoffiti prototype, and she thankfully loved the idea and came aboard. She was actually the one that recommended José to us.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. None of us were extremely skilled in micro-engineering, so Michaela introduced us to this kid with a mind like a decacomputer, and we’ve all been somewhat of a family ever since.”

More Fieldnotes: April 20th, 2108 -I went on a supply run with Elijah. He needed to pick up more pixel diffusers which were only available in Old Manhattan.

-The trip took some time because there were no longer any bridges that connected the two boroughs.

After the encasing of the lower districts, people rallied for direct access between Paleo Bronx and Old Manhattan so they could still commute to their jobs and schools, but the passageway they created that went through Upper Old Manhattan was so narrow, the buildup of exhaust and other fumes from the traffic nearly reached toxic levels. Elijah later told me people living there developed all sorts of respiratory problems, but couldn’t move as there was nowhere else to go.

-We passed by a broken air ventilator.

-The shop that had the pixel diffusers was all the way on the Lower East Side so I got to see a lot of Old Manhattan in passing.

It was just quick glances, but immediately certain things were more apparent to me than the other times I had been there. The walls of the dome, I noticed, were much closer to the original edge of the city. In Paleo Bronx and even Upper Old Manhattan, much more of the landmass was cut off and flooded. Homes and neighborhoods were literally cut in half and labelled as “essential sacrifices”, but looking out the window of Lower Old Manhattan I wondered where their “essential sacrifices” were, and who dictated these sacrifices in the first place?

-There were a lot more people from the upper districts here than in Paleo Bronx. You could tell because when you travel between districts you get a little orange tag that states how long your intended stay is.

It only then occurred to me how strange this was. The New York City Board of Travel encourages tourism to the lower districts as a way to keep capital flowing between the districts, and as an “experience of culture from where it all began,” but if most people keep travelling to the same few districts, the capital doesn’t diffuse at the rate it should; and if tourists want to see where culture began, they’re visiting the wrong spots.

Conversation with Andre Bell:

I was writing in my notebook when Andre called me over to the monitor he was working at.

“Hey, I wanna show you something.”

He pointed to the small table beside him. It had a green checkered surface and different dials and buttons along the side, and it was hooked up to his monitor.

“You working on a new piece?” I asked.

“I am. But this is something else.”

He told me that the table was called a rendering table. I was surprised. I’d seen rendering tables before but none like that. They were always so thin and sleek, and usually housed in places like labs or universities. I’d never known a space as small as this to have one.

“José made this for us-” I hate cutting people off, but this time I couldn’t contain my utter shock. The mind someone has to have in order to build one of these on their own is completely incomprehensible to me.

“He made this himself?”

“Yeah, the guy’s crazy with nano-engineering. We’re really lucky.”

Andre pulled up some programs I was unfamiliar with, and fiddled with dials on the rendering table.

He began explaining, “So basically, this is how we prototype our holograms. We design and animate them on the computer, and the rendering table projects small-scale versions of them so we can see how they look 3-dimensionally. This is from one of our older pieces about smog build-up.”

He pressed a button, and a hologram of thick smoke appeared on the rendering table. It was nowhere near as realistic as one of their finished pieces, but still mesmerizing.

“I don’t know if you saw this particular piece, but this is what it looked like in an early stage. I thought it would be cool for you to see some of the processes behind holoffiti.”

“It’s incredibly cool! It’s almost unbelievable how this tiny projection becomes so powerful.”

I took another moment to admire the projection.

“Do you have a favorite piece you guys have created?”

There was a moment of silence in which I could tell Andre was thinking hard about the question before answering.

“I think our first piece is still my favorite. It was so bold, right off the bat. I think it showed everyone we weren’t just playing around, that we had a message and demanded it be heard.”

“You’re talking about the monorail car filling up with water, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you guys decide on that idea?”

“Well we wanted to bring up some of the most pressing concerns first, and the four of us mutually agreed to focus on flooding for our first piece.

He looked out the window and gestured for me to do the same. It was late in the afternoon, almost dark out. In the upper districts around this time, you could usually see deep purple and red streaks of sunset stretching across the sky, but down here there was just the bright fluorescent lights dimming until they turned off for the night.

Andre pointed at the road.

“See how the ground’s always wet like that? That’s from flooding and leakage. Putting a dome over an entire city is only a temporary fix, not a permanent solution.

“I’ve seen some leaking and cracks in the glass, but how is the flooding contained?”

“The flooding mostly happens underground. A couple years after they built the dome around us, we realized that any future building developments would have to be done underground because of the now limited airspace. This would’ve been fine, but the years of nonstop rain ate away at all the previous underground foundation and created these channels filled with water that development laborers had no way of knowing when they’d run into, so one bad drilling spot, and whole construction sites would be flooded. You’d think that’d be a good enough reason for them to stop.”

“They’re still doing construction, despite all this?”

“The guys calling the shots on this don’t care. All they see is a growing population with limited space, they’ll continue their downward expansion no matter how many of their workers drown.”

Andre seemed to be staring out the window lost in thought rather than observation now. I looked back at the rendering table with the small holographic smoke still projecting from it.

“So on the monorail, you guys wanted to replicate what it’s like for the development laborers?”

“Exactly. Most people can’t sympathize with a tragedy unless it’s right in front of their face, so that’s exactly what we did, we brought it to their faces. We took a transport tube to the upper districts, got on an early morning monorail car, activated our holoffiti display, and let a group of New Yorkers think they were about to drown on their way to work.”

I smiled. “And how did that go over?”

Andre laughed. “About as well as you’d think. People freaked. Some tried the windows, others called to the conductor, a lot of initial chaos. But after a bit, people started realizing the water wasn’t real and calmed down a bit. Some were still on edge, but most were just confused.”

“And after?”

“Well we got in a little bit of legal trouble, but nothing we didn’t expect. No one was hurt, people were definitely talking about it, and it was the first time we really saw the direction we wanted to take holoffiti in. The next day felt surreal, even talking about it now I can’t believe how much the story blew up. Everyone from bloggers to news outlets were telling the story of what we did, and more importantly, why we did it.”

Analysis:

My time spent with the holoffiti artists was one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had. Working and learning alongside the incredible minds of people who are so devoted to their community allowed me to draw conclusions about my own city that I might never have otherwise.

Going into this, I knew there was a lot of room for improvement when it came to the relationship between the upper and lower districts, but coming out, I’ve learned just how strained it is, and how great the disparities truly are. Holoffiti isn’t only miraculous in itself and what it’s done, but also what it’s paved the way for. It has been one of the few things that’s successfully bridged the gap between the upper and lower districts. It was able to bring together two neighborhoods that may as well have been world’s apart. Andre and Elijah looked at issues their communities were already speaking out against, and found a way to amplify their concerns. They used their own self taught knowledge and skills to translate the problems being faced by the lower districts into rhetoric that would not only be understood by, but resonate with the upper districts. Never had “lower district matters” been so felt by uppers that they were viewed as simply, “city matters.” Holoffiti carved out a path of dialogue between the districts, one that can and will be followed in the future.

Coming from the upper districts, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing only praise when speaking about the glass dome covering the districts below us. Afterall, it’s the only thing between them and millions of gallons of water flooding their homes, so why shouldn’t they be thankful? While it’s true, this dome does keep the water out, it also keeps any chance of upward mobility out, very literally. It doesn’t matter if the dome was initially conceived as a positive solution installed to save lives. What matters is how it’s since shaped those lives. With its concealment of entire communities underwater, shortage of habitable space, and tagging system that only allows interdistrict travelling for pre-determined amounts of time, the dome has become a way to control a large population of poor people and minorities who don’t have the means to access the upper districts. The one thing that was supposed to protect people turned

out to be the greatest threat to their livelihoods; Because a large barrier preventing half of our city’s citizens from accessing a livable environment isn’t a solution in the slightest, it’s just another large, sparkling, taunting, glass ceiling.

Visual Components:

This is a map of what the lower districts looked like after the floods and the dome was installed.

Brownish colored areas show the smog buildup visible from above. The red star represents where I stayed with the holoffiti artists in SoPaleo Bronx.

This is a map of the upper districts. You can see the lower districts underneath the water.

This is a layering technique Michaela showed me. She used this to impart multiple colors, texture, and movement onto a beginning stage holoffiti animation.

This is what a possible finished holoffiti piece, demonstrating the layering technique above, could look like if projected in an elevator.

My own hologram. This is a video of the hologram projector I built projecting possible holoffiti concepts. There are two different types of waves and smoke.

[The idea for creating these specific holograms came from the section ‘Conversation with Andre Bell,’ I wanted my projection to mimic what the images coming out of the rendering table would look like.]

This is the video I play for my hologram projector to project. You can see the animations I chose more clearly here.