Van Alen Institute announced today the launch of Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures, a public art project that allows individuals to browse visionary designs for the City of New York on their iPhones.
Users can view images and descriptions of speculative projects ranging from Buckminster Fuller's dome over midtown Manhattan, to Antonio Gaudi's unbuilt cathedral, to Archigram's pop-futurist "Walking City," all while standing on the projects' intended sites.
Designed by Van Alen Institute New York Prize fellows Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder, Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures is not only a window into innovative architecture, but a work of unconventional design in itself - a robust, database-driven contribution to the field of mobile media public art, interfacing with the project's interactive website, and part of the small but emerging genre of iPhone "app art."
The project launch will take place on Saturday, October 3, 2009, starting with a tour and scavenger hunt.
Participants will meet at 1:00pm at the base of the aerial tram station on Roosevelt Island, and will reconvene at Van Alen Institute at 4:00pm for a reception and prizes.
Individuals interested in participating in the tour and scavenger hunt must email rsvp@vanalen.org by 5:00pm on Wednesday, September 30 to reserve a spot and to receive instructions on downloading the iPhone app.
Those who do not have an iPhone will be teamed up with someone who does.