From architects to skateboarders, Conflux participants have an enthusiasm for the city that’s contagious. Over the course of the long weekend the sidewalks are literally transformed into a mobile laboratory for creative action. With tools ranging from traditional paper maps to high-tech mobile devices, artists present walking tours, public installations and interactive performance, as well as bike and subway expeditions, workshops, a lecture series, a film program and live music performances at night.

Don’t miss — http://confluxfestival.org/2009/

The Village Voice describes Conflux as a “network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators… making fresh, if underground, contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today’s fight for the soul of high-density metropolises.”

Are the places that matter most to you part of the official narrative of your city? Chances are they are not…

But projects like [murmur] help to make places matter for everyone. The latest launch comes to us from a group of high school students in Orange, NJ recorded people’s stories about places and developed this: http://murmurorange.com/

At its core, [murmur]‘s mission is to allow more voices to be woven into the “official” narrative of a place or city, democratizing the ability to shape people’s perspectives of place, and making cities, neighbourhoods and ordinary places come alive in new ways for listeners. [murmur]’s stories, though personal or even purely anecdotal, inevitably reveal elements of the wider social, civic and political history of a given spot, its surrounding location, and the communities and individuals connected to it. And each story’s details truly come alive as the listener walks through, around, and into the narrative. By engaging with [murmur], people develop a new intimacy with their surroundings and “history” acquires a multitude of new voices, while the physical experience of hearing a story in its actual setting – of hearing the walls talk – brings uncommon knowledge to common space, bringing people closer to the real histories that make up their world, and to one another.

What places would you put on the [murmur] map in your city?

You can join us for the official launch party!!

[murmur] Orange Launch Party, Ironworks Studio, 406 Tompkins Street, Orange, NJ 07050,

Sunday September 20, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.

Directions from nyc: Take the 1:11 NJ Transit train from Penn Station to Highland Ave.  From Highland Ave.: Walk downstairs and go right on Freeman Street, walk two blocks and turn left on Tompkins Street.  Ironworks Studio will be on your left.

Check out this guys map!

Check out the map!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/29/opinion/20090829-smell-map-feature.html?emc=eta1

Scents and the City
By JASON LOGAN
New York secretes its fullest range of smells in the summer; disgusting or enticing, delicate or overpowering, they are liberated by the heat. So one sweltering weekend, I set out to navigate the city by nose. As my nostrils led me from Manhattan’s northernmost end to its southern tip, some prosaic scents recurred (cigarette butts; suntan lotion; fried foods); some were singular and sublime (a delicate trail of flowers mingling with Indian curry around 34th Street); while others proved revoltingly unique (the garbage outside a nail salon). Some smells reminded me of other places, and some will forever remind me of New York.