The first installment of The East River Project takes place in the neighborhood Novak and Bennett reside in, The International District in Seattle, Washington.
On the walking tour, multiple Day-Glo orange stencils supplant The International District’s pavement with orange silhouettes of the Williamsburg Bridge, The Dominos Sugar Factory Tower and pit bull variety dogs, enabling viewers to experience their environment in a state of hyper-awareness by referencing a parallel but different landscape. The stencils are made of the same marking paint used by municipal workers to mark gas mains, causing transplanted landscape elements to blend with the surrounding street text. The Brooklyn images are dispensed in multiples, enabling them to live on, even as they recede as landmarks in their own Brooklyn setting.
The MP3 contains field recordings made in Brooklyn and Manhattan by Bennett, then combined and mixed in Seattle by Yann Novak to produce a narrative soundtrack for the first walking installation.