Research notes for project planning
What the project record tells us
Times Square; UNC Asheville fabrication
Fabrication can be an educational partnership
Wake combined a shipwreck-like structure with an animatronic figure derived from the USS Nightingale’s Jenny Lind figurehead. Chin’s documentation credits UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio, where students, faculty, staff and community artists worked under Mel Chin Studio’s direction. The 2018 Times Square installation therefore offers a specific precedent for shared production rather than an assumption about any one studio’s equipment. A comparable partnership needs defined supervision and decision authority. Which tasks would support learning while preserving clear responsibility for engineering, fabrication and installation?
Mel Chin — Wake ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWhich tasks support learning while preserving clear production responsibility?
Big Art Partners planning prompt Times Square mixed-reality project
Digital experience needs a complete production brief
Unmoored added a mixed-reality experience to Times Square in 2018, imagining the familiar streetscape transformed by rising water. Chin’s project credits Microsoft and a wider group of development, sound and research collaborators. That record suggests budgeting digital public art as an assembled production with several dependencies. The experience includes what appears on screen and the conditions under which a visitor can access it in public space. Who will own testing, compatibility decisions and documentation of the experience after its original exhibition?
Mel Chin — Unmoored ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWho will own testing, compatibility decisions and documentation?
Big Art Partners planning prompt Pig’s Eye landfill research
Environmental research requires its own success criteria
Revival Field’s early landfill experiment paired Chin with scientist Rufus Chaney and a structured planting trial in St. Paul. The Walker’s history describes repeated harvests, controlled variables and restricted site access. This precedent supports distinguishing an artwork’s research purpose from a promise that a whole site has been remediated. Scientific partners, permissions and measurement protocols can determine the project’s shape as much as its visual form. What evidence would demonstrate the proposed environmental result, and who would be responsible for evaluating it?
Walker Art Center — Revival Field ↗ · Reviewed 2026-10-10
For your project briefWhat evidence would demonstrate the environmental result, and who would evaluate it?
Big Art Partners planning prompt 
