Subway Signs: Clark St 2/3 Stop

Subway stations strike me as the most interesting venues for public art. What has, by unknown civil engineers, architects and administrators, been considered "universally appealing" is often... puzzling. Take the Clark 2/3 stop, for example. I've always been fascinated by the floor pattern in the corridor between the elevators and the stairs down to the platform, and spent many an hour (seriously) mentally searching for the rhyme or reason to the pattern. I could never figure it out. What is the relationship between the different shapes and colors??

After taking these photos today, I think I see something -- in each vertical row (if you're looking in the direction of the second photo), the red circle slowly moves from bottom to top to encroach upon the comfortable union of the triangle and square. Zounds, have I cracked the code?

Subway Signs: Bergen F/G Stop

I just can't stop seeing patterns everywhere -- here is a wall of tiles at the Bergen F/G stop. What's going on here? What's the secret message?

Subway Signs: Out-of-Order Patterns

As many people who know me know, I am obsessed with patterns. Patterns! I love them. There is something so satisfying about repetition, about the tension between the simplicity of a single unit or motif on the one hand, and the complexity that occurs when that single unit is repeated. There is a deep, epistemological basis for why patterns are so fascinating, too, I believe -- after all, meaning itself is based on repetition, on one thing standing next to another. No one thing can mean anything without another to which it can be compared.

Anyway, the other night coming home from class, I was very much struck by this out-of-order sign on the Manhattan-bound G train. Totally wacky!! I would love to design some kind of fabric based on these seemingly random grid patterns.