A Place For Developing Thoughts

As I went out yesterday and took photographs of the intersections and major roadway that have seen use of traffic cameras, I started to understand better how this is art. I find that it is in the process of developing and idea into art the real art starts to take shape.

While driving, I saw myself creating a grid of every street, avenue and road I drove down. I envisioned it like an etch-a-sketch where if you draw enough vertical and horizontal lines, you'll clear the screen and reveal what is actually there.

I already knew that the traffic cameras were more than driving and more than cars. And the meaning is even beyond the legal implications. Traffic cameras show what we are saying about ourselves as a community.

Using traffic cameras is saying that motorists are guilty for driving. And further, do we want a community where the majority of the residents are "guilty". Is there a way to turn this into a concrete picture instead of an abstract concept?

Yes!

The grid. Let's remove everything on the surface and show the real idea behind it all.

It's hard to see until you turn it into small pieces to make the whole.

All owners of registered vehicles are participants. As we drive down the streets of Cedar Rapids, we a creating a grid which will eventually cover every street. The city blocks are sections, that as a car drives down it, that section gets cut out, revealing what is behind. You can also view it as a game of "Black-Out" in Bingo. Black-Out is where everyone has a Bingo card and the Bingo caller picks numbers until someone blacks out the whole card and call Bingo. Then an worker goes over to the person to verify the blacked out card and award a prize. The card only is a winner/has meaning when someone else verifies it is truly blacked-out. (I apologize for my long thoughts).

So instead of a black-out, we are doing a cut out.

Now, I need to come up with some logic for how to do a meaningful cut out and a proper scale.