longer version video https://www.youtube.com/L-SR0SZWzP4
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Hands Times Square now has its own page with video stills and the full version of the animation https://www.mirenarhee.com/hands-times-square-animation.
Watch a high resolution mp4 here:
Hands Times Square is dedicated to New York City and its people – the city I love, the city which inspires me, the city which paints on the sidewalks for no reason at all, the city that loves art and artists, the city where everyone is so different yet we live in peace.
Hands Times Square Animation and Simulation with hands drawings in a digital Times Square Landscape, dimensions variable, 2020. Created by American Contemporary Artist Mirena Rhee.
Story as told by the artist
Hands Times Square or as originally named – Times Square NYE 2020 – is an animation I created for Times Square Alliance and a part of a bigger Hands Scape’s project that involves New York City – it is only appropriate as New York inspires me and was the reason I do hands in the first place, it is a New York thing…
I spent new Years Eve here on Times Square ( hey it’s 2020, spent 2000 in Chicago, 2010 in San Francisco.. so time for a one of a lifetime experience ). I was amazed at how beautiful and exciting it was to share it with a million others. I learned quite a few things while there, one of them was how the NYPD does crowd control. It is quite fascinating and a science. Have you ever asked yourself why a million people running around like mad to get a glimpse of “the ball” don’t trample and stampede each other to death? Crowd control, it is good trust me – once I saw people running towards televisions I realized it would be easy to die under the heels of a half million tourists. This project is the evolution of this whole thread of thoughts and the expression of overwhelming number of exploding colored confetti.
About
This animation is also inspired by New Year’s Eve 2020 at the center of the World – Times Square. Where at midnight fireworks of Confetti explode into a colorful supernova at the stroke of midnight. Times Square is a supernova of exciting imagery, of people and movement, and lights and colors. People from all over the world, ages, walks of life and languages, come here to mingle in this Babylonian Square and bask in its energy. In this animation colorful hands draw extraordinary three-dimensional shapes. As they move through space they create flowing, complex structures of hand trails. The hands travel in a series of gestures creating abstract shapes. The hands coalesce into an ephemeral three-dimensional Times Square made of beaming hands. The camera floats through the beaming hands of Times Square and hands fireworks explode and saturate the space with color.
Statement
This animation is inspired by my own experience spending New Year’s Eve 2020 on Times Square, the Confetti, excitement and energy that fills the space. New York city has always been an endless animation, with hands of various sizes, colors and shapes moving and gesturing endlessly in public and private spaces in the city. It is literally a stream of hands of all kinds. This series of ephemeral hands structures arose from the realization that during simple and mundane daily activity, like holding onto the rails in the subway, the hands draw extraordinary three-dimensional shapes. As they move through space they create flowing, complex structures of hand trails – this body of work explores these ephemeral constructs. The hands are based on paintings of hands, scanned, animated and simulated on the computer. My own hands serve as the models and main building element of my work because they are present and available, constantly traversing and dominating my personal space.
Hands Times Square Video Stills
