Sidewalk Fossils
a geo location scavenger hunt
Liminal spaces are the ones where I find my inspiration and are a trove to explore, bring out or otherwise highlight.
“Overlooked” Project: “Sidewalk Fossils”
Wet cement used for sidewalks “lithifies” or turns to stone as it dries. Whether intentional or by chance, objects either become embedded in the fresh cement or leave an imprint. These imprints remain in place often for decades. These impressions and marks taken as a whole form a part of the landscape of sidewalks in New York City that is overlooked. When isolated or magnified these are interesting. Photographed and isolated further, they become works of art. And one possible setting would be to blow these up really large and put them in a gallery but another idea is to create a way for people to find these and participate in the discovery and sharing of these using geocaching location tools and the GPS enabled geo-tagging feature in smartphone cameras.
While more commonly found in hiking, geocaching does take place in New York City and “Sidewalk Fossils” could partner with Groundspeak, the geocaching’s organization, and the app developers who developed Cachly, the geocaching app. “Sidewalk Fossils” takes the curated, themed framework of the art exhibition and combines it with the discovery, logging and sharing of geocaching and brings it to the New York City sidewalks that are full of interesting and often overlooked “stuff.”
“Sidewalk Fossils” is an exhibition, mediated by an app and displayed on LinkNYC “links.” The duration for this exhibition is 6 months, with artwork refreshing daily. The LinkNYC is the hub for acquiring the QR code and viewing the “art work.” Not only will people look for and find objects in the “Sidewalk Fossils” trove of found objects, but they will also be able to photograph and submit their own finds for this geocached art exhibition. Those entries will be displayed on LinkNYC.
New Yorkers are spending more time out of doors and as the weather gets warmer looking for new activities as we wait for the city to fully re-open. “Sidewalk Fossils” leverages the fact that geocaching is one of these activities that saw an increase in participation during the pandemic. Reconnecting with the city and neighbors in safe ways, “Sidewalk Fossils” is a way to see the city sidewalks in a new way.
Reflection and Next Steps
For starting out as a project looking at the sidewalk in all its grittiness, once I looked past the gum, cigarette butts and trash, these marks and embedded objects became pretty interesting. This exhibition is doable. The tech is already in place. On a walk this weekend, I took this photograph in the Village. With GPS enabled in my smartphone camera, it was easy to geo tag as well as add descriptive information to the photo. The resulting information including a map makes it easy to find this sidewalk fossil.
