Private Passage (project)

Oddly, I've yet to post my own work here - I've been concentrating on the research. However, as a departure I thought I'd post some images of a project that I did the digital design and visualisation on. The project is Malcolm Cochran's 'Private Passage' (2005) a permanent public artwork for a new park on the Hudson River in NYC. The work is developed from the history of the site as the major port for trans-Atlantic travel and the artist's experience of having sailed from NY to Europe as a young child. Commissioned by the Hudson River Park Trust, 'Private Passage' is a 30' long by 8'-6” diameter wine bottle made of steel and coated with bronze which houses a free recreation of a stateroom of an ocean liner. Visitors to the park can view the interior through portholes on the sides and ends of the bottle.

Malcolm Cochran is Professor of Art and Coordinator of Sculpture at The Ohio State University, Columbus and was recently over here to present the project at The International Conference on the Arts in Society. I'm also working on three other projects for Malcolm.

Last September, I was able to visit the piece on site and was struck by how similar and yet how different the thing was in reality (having worked on it in 3D modelling applications for 3 years). The site model was built from 2D site plans and did not feature any of the surrounding buildings - so, this was one aspect that caused me some disjunction. Also, the trees on the plans (and so subsequently in my 3D models) were shown as mature whereas in reality they are just saplings.