UNION SQUARE — Contact with strangers is inevitable in New York City. Pedestrians brush pass each other while walking down the sidewalk. Straphangers briefly survey other passengers on the subway before returning to their books or smartphones.
But every so often, two complete strangers connect in some way, however fleetingly. Those random moments captivate artist Seth Caplan, so he recorded people talking about them.
Now, he’s planning to use those recordings as part of a public art project with the annual Art In Odd Places Festival, beginning Saturday.
“When you pause in the subway or you’re sitting on a park bench, you open yourself up to contact with someone,” said Caplan, 23. “For the project, I wanted to take those moments of private connection that happen in public spaces.”
Caplan raised about $800 on Kickstarter to finance the art installation, titled “And then I said…” (Bench Stories). He used the cash to assemble two sound boxes — about 4 1/2-by-4 1/2 inches each and constructed of steel, copper and wood — outfitted with mp3 players and tiny speakers.
One will be placed inside the subway station at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue, while the other will be set up on a bench in Union Square Park. Both will play recorded stories of stranger-to-stranger encounters.
Caplan collected the stories from friends and family, as well as from strangers. He set up a phone line that allowed people to call in and record, but he also took a digital camera to several New York City parks and interviewed average New Yorkers about those moments of personal connection that happen in public.
Some people knew exactly what he was looking for, he said, but others needed explanation. Caplan told them that he was looking for stories about things like locked eyes across a subway train, people who have encroached too closely on someone’s personal space or impromptu conversations.
Caplan listened to all the stories and edited them together to create one seamless stream of audio.
Now, he’s waiting to see how people react.
“I don’t know if it’s going to work. This is my first public art installation,” Caplan said.
The Great Neck, Long Island, native graduated from Washington University in St. Louis last year with a degree in photography. He came home to New York and wants to pursue art, but said he can’t afford to do that exclusively.
“I have to have like five jobs right now,” said Caplan, who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
He works as a photographer’s assistant two days a week, a waiter three times a week and a general freelancer who takes on a variety of projects for a price. In October, he will start volunteering one day a week with the Guggenheim Learning Through Art project, which will allow him to teach fourth-graders about art and also to learn different methods of instruction, he said.
Whatever time isn’t occupied by trying to scrape by, Caplan dedicates to art. Most recently, that has meant putting everything he’s got into “And then I said…” (Bench Stories).
The boxes will be set up in the two locations, on and off, for a week. An attendant — either Caplan or one of his friends — will stay with the boxes at all times to make sure that no one walks away with them or damages them, he said.
But they will try to remain inconspicuous enough so that they won’t interfere in people’s interactions with the boxes, he added.
Caplan said he isn’t sure what to expect from passersby. He knows people will be aware of the project because of his affiliation with Art in Odd Places, but it remains to be seen how the everyday strangers he’s targeting will respond.
In the small amount of testing he has done so far, Caplan said some have been apprehensive about interacting with a strange box in a public setting. But one woman sat down next to it and just stayed there, listening for awhile, he said.
Whatever reactions do come from the installation could spawn Caplan’s next big art project —although he hasn’t yet thought about what that could be.
“That’s the exciting thing about the creative process,” he said. “It’s never over.”
For a schedule of when and where the boxes from “And then I said…” (Bench Stories) will be on display, visit the Caplan's website.
