Lola Sheppard's Lateral Office lights up New York City Garment District with "immersive urban instrument"

Monday, January 20, 2020

Lateral Office has installed 12 oversized seesaws on the streets of New York City's Garment District.

Inspired by the iconic cover of the Joy Division album "Unknown Pleasures," as well as Steve Reich’s serial, minimal music, which plays with repetition, rhythm and syncopation, Impulse project explores how architecture can visualize sound. The seesaws, of 2 lengths, form units of light and sound that can be activated and played by the public to create a temporal, ever-changing event. Impulse embodies ideas of serialism, repetition, and variation to produce zones of intensity and calm within a large public space. The work was first presented in 2015 at Luminothérapie, a festival in Montréal. 

"The immersive urban instrument creates an exciting, playful experience, in which visitors become the musicians and artists through a series of illuminated seesaws that respond and transform when put into motion," said the Garment District Alliance, a non-profit that organised the project.

Impulse is installed in New York City's Garment District until 31 January 2020.

image of Impulse - people riding seesaws

Read more about Impulse
Dezeen
The Garment District NYC
Lateral Office