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On a February morning in the early aughts, an ambitious public art project called “The Gates” filled Central Park with flowing orange flags that visitors could walk beneath. It was open for just two weeks, bringing some much-needed levity to the city. More than 4 million people visited Central Park during the show's short run, and it generated an estimated $254 million in economic activity across the city.
Now, in celebration of these beloved artworks by the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a cutting-edge augmented reality experience on the Bloomberg Connects app will allow New Yorkers to discover The Gates once again. It's available to view in Central Park, along with a complementary exhibition at The Shed, from February 12-March 23.
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To try the experience in Central Park, you'll need to download the free Bloomberg Connects app on your smart phone. On the app, you'll find a map that will guide you through the experience. Start your walk at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue, then follow along with the signs from there. The app divides the experience into different sections. You'll need to recalibrate the augmented reality at each station stop (don't worry, directions at each sign will show you how).
Then, you'll get to walk through the gates, virtually anyway. You can even pose for pictures and videos. I didn't live in New York City back in 2005, so I never got to see the experience first-hand, but it's easy to see how magical and meaningful it was. Organizers say the communal art experience helped revive the city, which had been transformed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks just four years prior to the artwork's debut.
I tried the augmented experience today and can offer a few tips: Come with a fully charged phone. The experience is quite intensive on your phone's battery. If the app doesn't properly calibrate, troubleshoot by deleting and re-adding it.
The AR app was complicated to design. It relies on multiple technologies, such as GPS, visual positioning systems, and the physical landscape itself, Bloomberg Connects' David Harding explained. "The scale and scope in a challenging outdoor environment such as this, it really does push things," he added.
Similarly, creating the physical artwork 20 years ago wasn't easy. The artists devoted 26 years to making this monumental artwork a reality. It consisted of 7,503 saffron-colored gates adorned with free-flowing fabric that spanned 23 miles of pathways throughout the park. The individual gates were 16 feet tall and varied in width depending on the different widths of the park's walkways. The vertical poles were secured by narrow steel base footings—613 to 837 pounds each—positioned on top of the paved surfaces. Like all of their public projects, The Gates was completely funded by the artists themselves and free for all.
"The Gates was responsible for sparking an important conversation about public art and its role in urban settings and society," Vladimir Yavachev, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's director of projects, said in a press release.
The complex AR system renders each gate in staggering detail. The pieces of fabric move if it's breezy. When it's cloudy, the scene on your phone's screen will look overcast, too. When it's sunny, the screen will adjust.
"It's as close to the real thing as they could do it," Yavachev said on a tour of the augmented reality experience. "It's very important for Christo and Jeanne-Claude's legacy to bring it back in some way. They never wanted a project to be rebuilt, but at the same time, we can commemorate it in this way."
The Gates was the only project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude to grace New York City—though they had many ideas for others. Those projects are now commemorated in a free exhibition at The Shed in Hudson Yards titled "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates and Unrealized Projects for New York City." The exhibit includes original artworks by Christo, such as drawings, scale models, and components from the 2005 Central Park installation, alongside an immersive combination of photographs and videos. There's even an interactive, tabletop map of Central Park that shows you The Gates from a bird's-eye view.
You'll get to imagine several projects that the artists dreamed of, like an installation of oil barrels at the Museum of Modern Art and a proposal to wrap several skyscrapers. All these projects never happened thanks to logistics or controversy, but it's amazing to think of what the city would have looked like with them.