THE LAST SNOW IN BROOKLYN
Years ago, I remember coming across a small pile of snow in a dark corner of Crown Heights sometime in March or April. It had been months since the last snow storm, but this small pile was clinging on, a last gasp of winter amidst warming temperatures. I started thinking about the conditions that would incubate snow this late in Brooklyn and realized that these pockets of ice and snow were nestled safely into perpetual shadow. The Last Snow In Brooklyn is a project idea born out of the corners of Brooklyn where the sun never shines. It’s an exploration of shadows, their sources, and their impacts. And it’s a way to bring residents of Brooklyn into the conversation.

SEAWOLF: THE COMIC BOOK
In 2013, I wrote a short story for a college creative writing class where I blended the medium with a comic book structure. Years later, with the help of my friend Matt, we expanded on the universe and started to draft the actual issue breakdowns. Unfortunately, we never found an artist to help bring the vision to life, but it’s all there, ready to be made!

• Black and white illustrations
• A digital comic book that has a custom soundscape for each page (running on a loop to set the tone while reading)

CLOCK.NYC
Who decides what stories data tells about our city? What patterns and insights do we overlook when we rely solely on human intervention with that data? By using the parameters of a 12-hour clock, we aim to create a new understanding of NYC Open Data in two ways.

1. A 12-hour clock requires 720 distinct numbers. What trends, correlations, and shifts under this constraint  might come together to build a story - and a clock? 
2. By incorporating data into a 12-hour clock, we aim to present this data in a way that anyone can participate in, simply by reading the time. 

An on-the-nose exploration of NYC Open Data, clock.nyc’s parameters force a combination of discrete, extrapolated, and human curated data to tell a story of data through time, both past and present. It simultaneously invites viewers to question the availability and meaning of this data, and ponder what insights futures times could surface on clock.nyc. As the clock ticks forward, it challenges us to consider our collective responsibility in telling stories about our city, amidst a flood of information. clock.nyc serves as a reminder that through the chaos we can find meaning, drawing from the mess to unveil parallel pasts and possible futures, and creating simultaneous narratives of despair and hope, fragility and resilience, atrophy and progress.

This was a project submission for the 2024 Data Through Design contest, built and designed by Avinash Moondra, Demitri Nava, and Arpan Somani.

• The project brief is here
  
• MVP version of the clock: https://nyc-clock-site.onrender.com/
• Partnering with local projectionist/activists to display the clock on the side of a building in Brooklyn or Manhattan

SKYLINE DIRECTORY
In New York, we spend so much time with our necks craned down (see: text neck), despite the marvels that tower over us. If only we craned our necks up, what awe and inspiration would be bestowed from above? Skyline Directory is a photography project that uses mirrors laid on the ground and film photography to create reminders of the details that exist above us, despite our heads looking down.

• I bought a small 10 inch mirror for this project, which is placed on the ground or at an angle up against a building. The goal is to have the top of a building opposite the mirror in view, potentially with sky in view for context as well
• For a camera, I planned to use my Olympus XA2 point and shoot, and play around with b/w and color film
• Each photo would include metadata of what building is in view, and where the photo was taken, creating an underlying spatial story that goes behind the initial binary of Up and Down. 

BOOKMARKED
A chance discovery of an old bookmark in a used book led me to investigate its hidden past, and find a story of a son and his late mother, and a store she ran in the neighborhood, long before I lived here. So I’ve been thinking a lot about bookmarks, markers of time and place and sometimes, vestiges of past readers or past attempts at reading. And I want to know about your bookmarks (or lack of). Do you have favorite bookmarks that you’ve held on to? Do you use something unconventional to bookmark? Do you prefer dog earing your pages (to the dismay of your local library)? Do you have too many bookmarks? Let’s talk about it.

• I shared instructions to friends that asked for them to either send me a bookmark along with a small written blurb about its story
• I planned to compile these into a zine that explores the history and role of bookmarks, interspersed with these personal stories and examples of bookmarks
• The last page of the zine would include perforations to be able to tear off new bookmarks, including instructions to use the bookmark and leave it in a book that either gets sold, returned to the library, or given to friends.
• The idea was to connect strangers through the intimacy of a shared bookmark and knowledge that Someone Was Here.

SPACE ACCOUNTABILITY DEPARTMENT
The Space Accountability Department (SAD) website will be a central hub for information about public spaces across NYC that have both historical and present-day context related to broken promises around intended use, community or rezoning agreements, and general impact on local communities. The website will mimic an official NYC government agency website to challenge the authority of information presented through official channels, with our own unique interrogations into the histories and contexts of these spaces. Here is the original project brief.

• In addition to having general information about public space in NYC, this website was going to include tools to do quick emails to your local council person based on specific projects in your zip code
• We also wanted to encourage others to do their own public space interrogations and have some way of expanding the content on the site with what people found