My Master’s thesis, entitled The Beacon Project: A Collaborative Memorial, is a participatory framework for the creation of a multitude of glowing light cubes, or “beacons,” to be displayed as an annual memorial on the anniversary of September 11. Through online instructions, tutorials, and face-to-face workshops, I hope to facilitate the construction of a city-wide network of beacons. On September 11th and the evenings leading up to it, each participant will display their beacons in public view (on their roof, fire escape, window, etc.), adorning the city in an act of public art and remembrance. Through the efforts of this ad hoc community of artists, makers and activists, a memorial will materialize for a few nights each year. The resulting work will surround its viewers as they pass through the city, and has the capacity to grow and change each time it is displayed.
Overview
The project has three key aspects: A website for the dissemination of instructions and tutorials on how to build a beacon, which also serves as the locus for a community of participants. Secondly, a series of workshops that will provide firsthand instruction on how to construct a beacon, enabling participants to learn the skills necessary to contribute to the project and bringing them together in a face-to-face environment. And finally, a series of loosely-organized walking tours during the evenings on which the beacons are displayed.
The following excerpt from my thesis paper provides some critical and theoretical context for the project:
“To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is to be lifted out of the city’s grasp… [The viewer’s] elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was “possessed” into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more.”
-Michel de Certeau
The Practice of Everyday Life
For the theorist Michel de Certeau, viewing Manhattan from the top of the World Trade Center was to see literalized the techniques and ways of knowing that had informed the planning and organization of urban space since the sixteenth century. Like the visitor to the World Trade Center, the urbanist, city planner and cartographer envision the city not in its teeming multiplicity, but as representation or simulacrum: through the schematic, the diagram, the map. The spaces produced by such techniques are the panoptically administered spaces of Foucault’s disciplinary society, capable of “managing, differentiating, classifying and hierarchizing all deviances.” For Foucault, these apparatuses constitute a micro-physics of power that is totalizing and inescapable; but, for de Certeau there remain “procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised.”
The Beacon Project aims to function as just such a procedure, by providing a framework for the creation of a participatory, DIY memorial for the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. For a few nights in September, the collaborative efforts of a loose-knit community of artists, designers and hackers will transform the skyline of New York with a multitude of glowing cubes, or “beacons,” in an act of public art and remembrance. Where the process of rebuilding the World Trade Center site has been plagued by bureaucratic delays and opacity to the public, The Beacon Project is an opportunity for creative New Yorkers to contribute to a living, evolving memorial that will emerge for a few nights each year. Finally, it is my hope that Beacon sustains a productive tension between the need and desire to memorialize the victims of September 11th with a critique of incumbent modes of memorialization and the systems of power and knowledge by which they are produced.
Key Insights
The most important lesson I learned in the process of this project is that the community infrastructure is just as important, if not more so, than the design and construction of the beacons. At the outset of the project, I invested my time heavily in experimenting with different construction techniques and circuit designs. The project site functions primarily as a repository for the instructions and tutorials. While it does include some features that allow for the sharing of user-generated content, they proved to be insufficient for enabling participants to communicate and collaborate as effectively as I would have hoped. In retrospect, I should have invested more time on the creation of a site with robust community and networking features (user profiles, message boards, wiki, etc.). Ultimately, this project is more about community and collaboration than it is about the specific objects that are produced by individual members of that community.
The test workshops that I ran with classmates also provided valuable insights into how to improve the project. First, I learned which of the steps in the instructions I provided where vague or unclear. I was able to revise these to make the process easier to understand. However, it became clear that some of the construction techniques for the plexiglass cube would be difficult to accomplish without specialized equipment, such as a laser cutter. Furthermore, participants with a knowledge of basic analog circuitry were able to build the circuit without any difficulty, but some novices found the process too complicated.
Finally, in experimenting with different materials, electronic components and construction techniques for the beacons, I was challenged to strike the right balance between cost, quality and simplicity. Ultimately, the materials necessary to construct each cube were more expensive than I would have liked – my goal was to keep the total material cost under $30. The most expensive component, by far, was the plexiglass; thus far, however, I have been unable to find alternative materials that are as easy to work with and meet the same aesthetic criteria. Conversely, the analog circuit components were very inexpensive, but more difficult to work with than, say, an Arduino microcontroller, which would have been significantly more expensive.
Next Steps & Ongoing Work
The most important next steps for the implementation of this project are to develop a community site with robust collaboration and social tools; to refine the design process and research other materials for the beacon construction; and to identify grants and partner organizations to help with the cost of materials, provide space for workshops, etc. Currently, I am focusing on adapting the instructions from the current site to make a tutorial for Instructables.com and developing a Drupal site to replace the current WordPress version. I am also researching and applying for grants and financial support, as well as residencies that provide studio space, access to a workshop, etc.
My initial goal for The Beacon Project was to have it coincide with the tenth anniversary of September 11; I am still optimistic that I may be able to find the necessary funding and resources in time to get the project off the ground by then. But I have also decided that, even if it doesn’t happen this year (or happen on the scale that I originally envisioned), I will continue my work on Beacon, since the ultimate goal is to create an annual memorial that comes to life every year. If you are interested in participating, contributing or collaborating, or just have suggestions or advice on how to improve the project, please drop me a line.