Concept for San Jose Wayfinding Project by Simon Geilfus/ANTIVJ

Updates
Is there a gold medal in placemaking?

As I watched the beginning of the Winter Olympics and listened to all the stories from reporters of hotel rooms without functioning bathrooms, missing roofs, and electronic snowflakes that don’t morph to rings just like they should no matter how many times it worked in rehearsal; I began to think.

Despite all of the “mishaps,” thousands of people who have never been to Sochi were visiting for the first time and having a great experience, from the athletes and their friends and families to sports lovers, and yes, even the reporters I’d bet.

So placemaking is a magical combination of places, events, and people that has so many variables that it is never formulaic and always changing; that is what makes it such a dynamic and sometimes frustrating undertaking.

The last couple of months saw more incremental movement in the San Jose Illuminating Downtown project. The most exciting event was the presentation by ANTIVJ of their proposal for a “wayfinding” system in downtown on January 22, but this is wayfinding like you’ve never seen it. ANTIVJ has been in fellowship at ZERO1 (a recent ArtPlace grant recipient) to explore the opportunity to bring art and light to empower visitors to move and engage in an unfamiliar place.

The Illuminating Downtown wayfinding project was developed through the ZERO1 Fellowship program. The fellows are presented with what are identified as “innovation challenges,” a perfect framing of our wayfinding project. They are then supported with engagements with potential technical partners who may help them realize their vision.

From the presentation program:
Contemporary urban environments are complex social systems that challenge citizens to navigate and be coherently connected in new ways. Imagine a new artistic platform for way-finding that incorporates interaction, mobility and open data to enhance and personalize pedestrian and commuter experiences to connect and (re)discover the city.

And this is the response by Simon Geilfus of ANTIVJ:
Imagine strolling around downtown San Jose after business hours. As the sun goes down, the empty walls of the city slowly light up. Mysterious life forms glide along the surface of the wall across the street. Around the corner, another bare building surface, and another intriguing display of light . . .

Simon’s project proposes an illuminated navigation system to San Jose—an intricate web of large-scale projections that lure the commuter, the pedestrian, the random flaneur (they’re a European-based visual art label remember), through the downtown streets; encouraging one to connect physically and (re)discover the city. The projections themselves are conceived as a cooperative urban experience, with an invitation to the audience to participate in the creation of the ever-evolving visuals through their mobile device. The use of open city data as the driving force behind this interaction suggests a bridge between the physical and the digital downtown world and makes the street-level engagement even more meaningful. San Jose’s urban environment is being repositioned as a place of open exchange and community building between those already familiar and those about to become familiar with the city’s inner core.

Recent Wins
-- The ANTIVJ project solidifies an in-kind partnership with Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI to explore connecting big data generated through City systems as a component of the project.

-- Several local companies along with nationally and internationally recognized companies have expressed interest in partnering on the ANTIVJ project.

-- The San Jose City Council unanimously supported Dan Corson’s gateway project in a recent meeting—the buzz is definitely building.

-- Projects “from left field” are flowing into the program about using art and light to build awareness around people, places and issues throughout the city!

Insight/Provocation
So going back to the top of the post—is there a gold medal in placemaking? We’ve been thinking a lot about goal setting, the “life” of Illuminating Downtown, next phases, and how even the initial program is morphing.

And what we find valuable are check-ins like these that allow us to look back and see what we’ve achieved, and what it has taken to get here, and realizing there has been an impact. So even if the doors don’t have handles yet, and maybe there’s no running water, the sum of the parts is making a place that we are all getting pretty excited about.