Hers is just one of dozens of crowd-selected projects set to line Market Street during the festival and spanning multiple neighborhoods. Set to debut at the Market Street Prototyping Festival (more on that below), this piece explores the intersection of past and present through installation art. CityLab writes more about the historical waterways of this urban environment: “There was once a time when San Francisco was glistening with creeks and arroyos, or streams that stay dry for part of the year. Down in the Mission there was a gulch whose water helped sustain cattle and crops. Winning entries, as diverse and exciting as the people of San Francisco themselves, will be brought to life for three days along Market Street’s sidewalks, where millions of pedestrians from all walks of life will have the chance to experience, explore, and interact with the prototypes.”
Like other projects in the mix, Ghost Arroyos is designed to be interactive and community-driven. Ghost Creeks: Resurfacing Vanished Waterways on City Streets
Half-forgotten historical urban rivers are set to resurface in San Francisco as part of a civic installation project designed to fill in their historical footprints with a bright blue work of temporary art. Visitors … will be invited to trace the path of the waterways while listening to a curated recording of hydrological soundscapes and oral histories.”
Emily is a designer living and working in the Bay Area. Up until the 19th century, ephemeral streams ran through nearly every valley in San Francisco, channeling rainwater to peripheral tidal estuaries. When Spanish explorers arrived in what’s now the Lower Haight in the late 1700s, they found a healthy brook and named it Fuente de Dolores. In 1878, the municipal government took another natural channel under modern-day Cesar Chavez Street and turned it into a sewer.”
Some additional information on the festival itself (with a further video introduction above): “Market Street will transform into a public platform, showcasing exciting ideas for improving our famed civic spine and how we use it. Still at a conceptual stage it remains to be decided whether the work will involve physically painting the streets or projecting light down on them from above. She is interested in the intersection of landscape processes, art, and systemic design and aims to incorporate these issues into her work.
