Unlike the majority of my peers, I have not lived in New York for my entire life. In fact, I have only been here for a mere two months. My relationship with public art is not one of childhood exploration and endearment, but a relatively new, and sometimes surprising, discovery. I have always described it as a “vacation trope”; something I would only ever see when I left home. Now, art is all around me: sprawled across the sides of buildings, adorning the tiles of popular subway stations, and even, as one friend often tells me, at the bottoms of lampposts. Some art, however, only makes an appearance if you know where to look.
During one of the early weeks of the school year, I needed to take the subway uptown to Manhattan. I had only taken the subway alone a few times at that point, so I relied heavily on Google Maps in order to get where I wanted to go. On this particular day, my usual route uptown was stalled due to the 2 train not running, leaving my fastest option (according to Google) to take the 5 train to Atlantic Avenue and then transfer to the B train. I had heard that the B train traveled above ground between Brooklyn and Manhattan, so I was excited to get a skyline view of the city while I traveled. Little did I know that I would be in store for a different sight just a minute before.
Crossing underground between Dekalb Avenue and Grand Street, I was already in place to look out of the train’s window to catch a glimpse at Manhattan, but my eyes were greeted by a colorful piece of artwork instead. I watched in awe as the colors danced in the window, creating a movie of images morphing into one another: a polygonal man becoming a three-dimensional zig-zag becoming a nest of lines becoming a rocket ship. Nobody else on the train seemed to notice it except for me, all paying attention to something else. Pleasantly surprised by this experience, I decided to do a little research.
I discovered that this piece is called “Masstransiscope”, and it was created by experimental filmmaker Bill Brand. In 1980, with the permission of the MTA, he essentially took over the out-of-use Myrtle Avenue station in Brooklyn, using over 200 hand-painted tiles to create a large-scale mural on one side of the station featuring repetitive, but slightly changing, images. On the other side of the station, he installed panels that would allow the motion of the subway train to create the illusion of a zoetrope, which is a device that creates a “movie” through a series of images or photographs. I think that this piece is aptly named, combining “zoetrope” with “mass transit”, which is exactly what it does.
“Masstransiscope” was sponsored by Creative Time, Inc., allowing Brand to find the funds for this expansive (and expensive) project. Along with the panels, he also included fluorescent lighting so that his piece would be visible during all times of the day. At 38 years old, this artwork is almost as old as my parents, so it no doubt needed to be restored to clear off the soot that had accumulated over the years; it was restored by MTA Arts for Transit in 2008, and again in 2013.
This interesting piece only reveals itself to you if you’re looking at just the right time, in just the right place; it only lasts for about 20 seconds. I like to think that this is the way Brand intended it, that only a lucky few, who either knew where to look or were just staring into space, would experience it per train ride. It’s more personal, in a way.
If you want to see “Masstransiscope” for yourself, just take a Q or B train from Brooklyn to Manhattan and look out of the right side windows.
