Urban Tangle takes cues from the urban theories of the Situationists, seeking to translate psychogeographic experience into a reconfigurable sculpture. 

Spatial excerpts from urban grids from global cities were analyzed, following an iterative geometric reduction process to fashion a family of interconnecting components. These tracts were digitized, with the infra-structurally defined connection points allowing for a three-dimensional collage to be constructed - a ‘cut-up technique’ for the city. This creation process refers to the mechanism through which individual experience and memory shape the act of urban navigation and the parallel construction of the mind’s narrative of the city. Each participant’s contribution to the agglomerated assembly draws on their individual response to the act of building and to their knowledge of the urban tracts to which the elements refer. Multiple individual inputs coalesce to form an iteration of the whole specific to the actors involved in its construction. This collision of individual approaches creates a novel psychic object, as well a unique physical installation. This iterative ‘cut-up’ sculpture allows for the construction of limitless configurations of the urban grid, mirroring the infinite psychic constructions of the city mediated by the unique sensory experiences of each urban individual.

Credits:  Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova, Matthew Mitchell, Mat Sokol, Shandor Hassan, Molly Ritmiller, Jasmine Hwang, Janghee Lee, Liana Grobstein