Public Art Installation: Hedgework

Created by Marek Walczak (Civic Space LLC), Mark Shepard (Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies), and Antonina Simeti (Timbre Consultants), with Robbie Lee and Wes Heiss.

Hedgework is an urban landscape intervention at Building 77 that takes the form of a sentient hedgerow. It is a community of native plants and environmental sensors that create a biodiverse habitat that supports nature and human interaction. Visitors can learn about the habitat and the Brooklyn Navy Yard by sitting amongst the hedgerow’s plants and animals, via QR codes to chat with Hedgework using AI, or by listening to the habitat’s soundtrack.

The group behind the installation describe themselves as “public artists, architects, and urban planners committed to fostering a greater understanding and engagement between humans and more-than-human actors in our environment. We create and deploy non-traditional pedagogical platforms in traditional urban spaces to generate new and unexpected responses.”

The installation was made at, and by, the Yard: Delivery pallets were reused for the weight, sand and stone from New York Sand & Stone, a subsidiary of Vulcan Materials is spread throughout the installation, and a solar panel system from Voltaic Systems powers the bird feeder and plant bed cameras.

Learn more at hedgework.net.