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Research Presentation: The Masstransiscope
November 6, 2002 |
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For my Communications Lab research project, I investigated the animations that greeted Manhattan-bound riders on a segment of track beneath downtown Brooklyn in the 1980s. I remembered the piece fondly from my regular morning commute to and from elementary school in Brooklyn Heights. The Masstransiscope (as it was called) was designed in 1980 by filmmaker Bill Brand, commissioned by a public arts grant from Creative Time, Inc. The hand-painted, 228 hand-painted panel piece was installed that September in the abandoned Myrtle Ave station on what was then the B, D, N and QB lines. It has since fallen into disrepair.
» Bill Brand's Site From The New York Times, September 17, 1980 (p. B6): HEADLINE: SUBWAYS ARE FOR SEEING BROOKLYN 'MOVIE' BYLINE: By GLENN FOWLER BODY: Passengers on many Manhattan-bound subway trains leaving the DeKalb Avenue station in Brooklyn in the last few days have been startled to find themselves moving through a world of fantasy as the dark tunnel suddenly became alive with an animated cartoon. What they saw was ''Masstransitscope,'' a moving picture in reverse, with the pictures fixed on a 300-foot, abandoned station platform at Myrtle Avenue and the viewers, instead of the image, in motion. Conceived by Bill Brand, a film maker, the unusual display consists of 288 hand-painted panels seen through a series of narrow vertical slits and mounted in a self-contained, illuminated unit. It works on the principle of the zoetrope, a 19th-century optical toy that makes images inside a revolving cylinder appear to move. ''I wanted to provide subway riders with the kind of delight that the viewers of the first motion pictures experienced,'' said Mr. Brand, who has made 24 movies in the last 10 years and who teaches film making at Sarah Lawrence College. A Nonprofit Installation The display was installed by Creative Time, a nonprofit organization that creates artwork for public spaces. Among its other projects are ''Art on the Beach,'' at the Battery Park City landfill and ''Windspun,'' a sculpture-in-sound alongside a power-generating windmill in the South Bronx. Anita O'Neill, executive director of Creative Time, said the Myrtle Avenue location for Masstransitscope was selected because it is passed by tens of thousands of riders each day on the B, D, N and QB subway routes. For each passing rider, the animated sequence lasts for 20 seconds. Formal opening of the display is scheduled for this morning but since last weekend, passengers have been able to see it in completed form. The National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts supplied grants for the project, as did the American Stock Exchange, Chase Manhattan Bank, Consolidated Edison and Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith. From The New York Times, January 16, 1981 (p. C5): HEADLINE: ART PEOPLE; The ride-by subway mural. BYLINE: By John Russell BODY: IT is fundamental to our century that we spend a great deal of time sitting still and watching a moving picture. But what if the situation were reversed, and it was we who were on the move and the picture that sat still? What if, when the subway train ran through a deserted station, we could stay in our seat and look out at a painted image that flashed by, frame by frame, as a film flashes by in a movie projector? First mooted in the British Journal of Photography in November 1909, this idea has matured even slower than a first-growth bottle of red Bordeaux. But it has now been realized in the disused Myrtle Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. Manhattan-bound passengers on the B, D, N and QB lines get to see a 300-foot-long art work that consists of 228 separate hand-painted panels. Seen through a series of narrow slits, they are mounted in a self-contained, illuminated unit that stays lighted every day of the week from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. It offers an arresting experience, in which colored forms (some abstract, some not) are seen to change, transform themselves, collapse, explode or blast off before our eyes in a matter of seconds. (The exact length of time varies with the speed of the train. A further element of ambiguity is added by the fact that the train usually slows down quite markedly at one point, thereby showing the traveler exactly how the piece works.) The entertainment is the work of Bill Brand, a young film maker. He put the idea to Creative Time Inc. Creative Time got support from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the City's Transit Authority, the National Endowment for the Arts, the State Council on the Arts and corporate sponsors too numerous to mention (but too generous to be forgotten). Since Red Grooms's ''Ruckus Manhattan'' in 1975, Creative Time has aimed to put art where New Yorkers least expect it. And with ''Masstransitscope,'' the title of Mr. Brand's work, they've done it again. ''I'm a lifelong subway rider, both here and in Chicago,'' the artist said the other day. ''I always wanted to do something in the subway on the principle of the zootrope - the 19th-century toy that makes images appear to move when you rotate them on a cylinder. As I'm a movie maker, I originally thought of a photographic image. Then I found that the subtlety and complexity of the photographic image wouldn't work in this context, so I figured I had to paint the images by hand.'' ''I wanted to get an effect of epic scale, like a mural by Diego Rivera that was off and running,'' he continued. ''I had to have a centered image because of the nature of the window frame and the slits. What I produced in the end seems to me to be like a kind of cosmic history of public mural art, even though it lasts only a few seconds.'' From The New York Times, November 17, 1996: Suspended Animation Q. There used to be a delightful animated installation in the subway tunnel leading to the Manhattan Bridge, but it has been covered with spray paint for years. Why does the M.T.A. continue to keep it lighted? Are there plans to restore it? A. No. Sandra Bloodworth, head of the transportation agency's Art for Transit program, says there is no money to restore the 1980 piece, or even remove the lights. After years of vandalism, the filmmaker Bill Brand's zoetrope-like work, called "Masstransiscope" has all but disappeared. Before they were besmirched, the 288 hand-painted panels on the north platform of the abandoned Myrtle Avenue station behaved sort of like a cartoon flip-book. Gazing out their windows, passengers on Manhattan-bound B, D, and Q trains saw a whimsical 20-second cartoon leap abruptly from the darkness, then disappear. Though partly cleaned and re-lighted in 1990, the installation now requires a full-scale renovation, which would cost about $25,000, Ms. Bloodworth said. Unless a private benefactor provides the money for such a project, the piece will remain disfigured and the bulbs, which are not part of the station, will keep burning. In recent years, the concept behind Brand's work has been used to create advertising underground. Some examples:
» Subway Advertising: Outdoor Underground
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Copyright © 2002 James G. Robinson
(and various collaborators, where noted).