Subway Stories
an interactive storytelling installation at SIGGRAPH
Concept
Every commute is shared space — bodies in proximity, minds elsewhere entirely. Subway Stories made those invisible inner lives visible, projecting hand-drawn characters onto architectural surfaces and inviting audiences to explore their thoughts, memories, and daydreams through a physical crank interface.
The piece is relevant as a precedent for campus installations that celebrate human contribution within large organizations. Where a subway car holds strangers whose stories go untold, a workplace holds colleagues whose breakthroughs, struggles, and creative leaps are often invisible to one another. The same interaction model — turning a crank to reveal a hidden narrative — could surface the stories of individual contributors to AI, making the abstract labor of research and engineering feel intimate and specific.
Exhibition
The installation traveled across multiple venues and formats, adapting its projection scale and interface to each context — from the intimacy of a gallery booth to the scale of a building facade.
SIGGRAPH Art Gallery
DUMBO Arts Festival
Subway Car Installation
The project was also installed inside a decommissioned subway car, where projections mapped directly onto the windows — collapsing the boundary between the illustrated world and the physical interior.
