Audio-Reactive
I went ahead and made the Memo Atken-inspired lyric TouchDesigner sketch audio-reactive. Thought it was fitting considering it’s built around one of my favorite songs. Walkthrough below.
Mapping: Labor History of NYC
For the mapping prompt, I chose Challenge 3: Choose a historic building and tell a story relevant to the building.
I chose the Forward Building in NYC, located at 173 E Broadway, New York, NY 10002 in the Lower East Side.
The building was the home of the Jewish socialist newspaper, The Forward, founded in 1897. It was primarily a Yiddish newspaper concerned with the working conditions and daily lives of working class Jews in New York but popularity of the newspaper spread nationally as the newspaper espoused Socialism and Trade Unionism, following the Social Democratic Party led by Eugene V Debs.
The building, now sadly luxury condos, has four busts outside its entrance, two of which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, writers of The Communist Manifesto and many other communist and socialist writings.
For this mapping, I included images of labor and striking throughout NY history, dating back to 1872 in striking for the 8 hour work day up until now in 2026, when NYC nurses just won higher wages and a new contract via striking.
In this time of political turmoil and fear, I find inspiration in the rich history of labor in NY and beyond, hoping that we can band together again as workers.
Ryan Rotella 
Leave a comment