Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong & Arup: Common Ground
COMMON GROUND from Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong on Vimeo.
Common Ground is a site-specific, interactive public artwork created by artist Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong, with lighting design and programming from Xena Petkanas and Christoph Gisel, Arup. Comprised of a colorful pavilion and floor motifs that dance across The Plaza at 300 Ashland, Brooklyn, the installation draws inspiration from the geometry of shrines and sacred spaces and referencing the terraces of the site, this architectural intervention transforms the plaza into an oasis for sitting, socialising, and gathering by day and by night.
Common Ground creates a bold, joyous interruption in the plaza, one of our everyday spaces, and offers a playable topography to embrace the here and now. As a community hub, Common Ground aspires to cultivate togetherness and resilience, while encouraging moments of pause, reflection, and play.
During the evening, Common Ground creates a shared synesthetic experience. Illuminated with color-changing lighting and sensors that register environmental audio, light animations shimmer across the sculpture’s steppes in response to these sounds – the movements of passers-by, footsteps climbing on the structure, voices, the ambient hum of traffic. Common Ground is a place of joy and light, celebrating resilience and togetherness to embrace the here and now.
The piece features 74ft of individually controlled RGB flexible encapsulated fixtures. Two sound sensors are located within the wooden modules at both ends of the sculpture. When no sound is detected, the fixtures slowly pulse in the artwork’s colour palette. When sound levels meet the designated threshold, a pulse of coloured light crosses the sculpture, originating from the side where the sound was detected.
Over the course of the exhibition, public programmes, including music and dance performances, activate the pavilion.
