Turbulence Commission: Awkward_NYC by Zannah Marsh :: Participate via the website or twitter, #awkwardnyc:

Awkward_NYC, or “The New York City Map of Awkward Social Interactions in Public Spaces,” is a collaborative online map for reporting social accidents and small interpersonal traumas that occur unexpectedly in public spaces. The map pinpoints sites in the New York Metropolitan area where misunderstandings, outbursts, physical altercations, arguments between friends or strangers, and romantic spats or break-ups have occurred. These mishaps are characteristic of the human urban experience — they’re unsettling, often comic, strangely powerful mini-narratives and dramas that would otherwise go untold, but may linger in memory for months and years, as we move through the same urban landscapes, day in and day out.

Anyone can add a story to the map; the project is fully web-based and participatory. The map taps into the confessional, voyeuristic, narrative impulses that typify online behavior and subverts the notion of mapping as reductive, objective, and authoritative. As stories are added to the map, a series of data visualizations depicting the emotional terrain of the city will be generated.

Awkward_NYC is a 2012 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence website. It was made possible with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHY

Zannah Marsh is a Brooklyn-based artist, designer, educator, and programmer with an interest in narrative data and collaborative storytelling. She has taught multimedia art and design at New York University, the New School, and in the City University of New York system. Zannah was a resident researcher at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and she’s interned with the Creative Systems Group at Microsoft Research and with Area/Code Games in New York City. She also worked as an exhibit developer at the Museum of Science in Boston, producing internationally-traveling interactive exhibits. She has a MPS from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009), and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2000).