High tech low tech art in parks.

New York's got great public art, in great parks that people actually like to spend time in.

Baltimore's got a couple parks that are getting safe enough to warrant some hang out time (our squirrels also wear baseball hats, apparently), and a few noteworthy murals and some crazy things outside MICA and around the Station North "Arts District" or whatever they call it.

Both have their alien spaceship-inspired eyesores (New York's happens to be leaving soon, but Baltimore's seems to be stuck here forEVER, to the point where complaining about it's getting old, so stop already, you're annoying me).

Madison Square Park in New York was once my favorite park in the city, and it may still be, if only for Danny Meyer's Shroom Burger and to-go glasses of wine, and the doggies. But back in 2007, I loved it for the best and most beautiful choice of public art I've ever seen, anywhere (right). It was called "Conjoined" by artist Roxy Paine, and it was haunting. I heard rumors they were going to make it a permanent fixture, but now the trees are somewhere in Texas.

The new thing in MadSqPk is Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's "Pulse Park": 200 "theatrical spotlights" pointed at the center of the parks oval lawn, controlled entirely by the heart rates of passersby. You walk into this booth thing and put your hands on these sensors (a la the elliptical) and the lights go on and off, mimicking your own heartbeat.

Pretty cool idea in theory. Also awesome when seen from above (though this would be hard to orchestrate, I imagine). But checking it out in person, on the ground, was a little less than awesome. Right next Jemmy's Run, the beloved dog park, is the installation's trailer-park-worthy "generator" on wheels. At night, when "Pulse Park" is turned on, the generator shakes, and the noise that comes from it is just unseemly. RrrrrrRRrrrrRRRrrrr. It doesn't sound like heartbeats. It sounds like dirtbikes.


"Pulse Park" is offset, thankfully, and interestingly, by Tadashi Kawamata's "Tree Huts"--simple, noiseless tree houses erected in trees around the park at level too high to ever conceivably climb to--there are no ladders, which is probably a safe thing. They are the daytime attraction, and standing beneath them, I was overcome with a feeling of childhood longing to climb and play inside. But you can't! No ladders. It's incredibly frustrating--not in the teeth-clenching, ear-plugging kind of way that "Pulse Park" is frustrating--more in a way that reminds you what it felt like to be small, and intimidated by tall trees, when tree houses built with shoddy plywood were the most magical houses ever.