Based on the description that the MTA provides on their website and an article by the gothamist, I feel like REACH New York fulfills its purpose “for getting total strangers to interact with each other”. This public interactive fits the subway station because you can interact with random strangers on the same and opposite platform, creating sounds that “evoke urban life” while waiting for your train, in one of the busiest areas in the urban city. The music that we heard during our field trip however, is different than the music heard in the gothamist article. The sound is much louder and there were more varieties of sounds than our encounter which could mean that there was either some sort of update somewhere between these past 19 years or the data in their mp3 has been corrupted and can now only play certain sounds loudly. The orientation of the musical instrument also gives the ultimate “stranger encounter”. When looking at the photos, people are waving right underneath the lights; they don’t notice the infrared beams technology like we did during our field trip. So between the two installations on both platforms, they are oriented away from each other, so that when people interact with it, their backs are facing each other, giving a sense of “stranger encounters” since they can’t see the other platform interact with the piece either.
