June 29, 2010

Animated Subway Tiles

Whenever I’m in the 42nd Street A/C/E station, I notice that the tile number 42’s along the wall look like consecutive frames of animation depicting a jumping or sinking number. There are similar tile 59’s at the 59th Street A/C/E station. They may appear elsewhere, too.

Today I decided to actually animate them.

Click to start the animation:


Comments

Ohhh. That makes me feel ooky in the tummy.

Cool.

I guess that that is what you see as you speed by on a subway, right?

No. These aren’t the kind of thing designed to animate as you ride past. Those are cool, too — usually advertisements in the tunnels — but that’s not what this is. These are just decorative elements in the station. They were not intended to be animated. -David

This is great. A+!!!

This image ought to be in one of those short films they used to play during The Electric Company or Sesame Street showing words and numbers in everyday urban life.

Very interesting you decided to post “42” … I see what you did there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)

Next time I’m in this subway station I’ll just be thinking CAN’T UNSEE

I shot a short video of the “animated” mural on the Q train on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan bridge: http://vimeo.com/11673303

I was listening to techno music when I clicked the image. It was fun to see the numbers dancing almost exactly in time to the music.

You should totally submit that to http://threeframes.net/

Bouncy, Bouncy 42. What fun ;)

I agree with the person who said it should be on Sesame Street.

Jessica

Hehe, this is definitely Douglas Adams- approved…42, the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. Good work!