TNOC Festival 2024

Two artists lead a nighttime walk through a waterfront park and salt marsh in New York City, exploring their public art project Wetland Shadows, where they are projecting videos onto the park's new surfaces, tracing out its ecological, industrial, and artistic history over the past 100 years.

Un Paseo El Agua is a series of road signs installed from 10th and Greenfield moving east towards Milwaukee’s Harbor District. The signs depict the unique and diverse landscapes of the Harbor District - illuminating its industrial past, critical role in the transportation of people and goods, and more recent development of spaces for public recreation and water access.

Join composer and sound artist Kamala Sankaram as she discusses the role of intentional listening, community soundscapes, and her interactive augmented reality sound walk, The Buried Brook. The Buried Brook traces the sonic geography of the buried Tibbetts Brook, which once flowed from Yonkers through the Bronx to the Harlem River. Participants can join the soundwalk by downloading the Buried Brook app. As they walk where the brook used to flow, location data from their phones turns on sound loops including field recordings, a choir, instruments including a saxophone and a sitar, and an invocation to the water sung in Munsee Lenape. Many of the field recordings were created from community recording walks that Sankaram led in the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park.

For this session, attendees will experience a virtual version of the walk. You will also participate in guided listening meditations with the intent of creating a community soundscape capturing the diverse locations of everyone present.

Join The Organizer's Guides to Architecture Education (TOGAE) for an interactive workshop on power mapping as a tool for envisioning and enacting change in the built environment and beyond. In this session, we'll introduce key ideas from our upcoming book and guide participants through a collaborative power mapping exercise focused on a selected aspect of the (built) environment. Together, we'll examine current power dynamics, identify leverage points, and explore strategies for transformative organizing at multiple scales. 

Through this hands-on experience, participants will gain practical skills in power mapping methodology and a deeper understanding of its potential applications in their own disciplinary contexts. We'll also engage in a broader discussion about the role of organizing in confronting entrenched power structures and re-imagining more equitable futures. Whether you're an architect, planner, researcher, activist, or simply passionate about creating more just and sustainable cities, this workshop offers a unique opportunity to expand your knowledge, connect with like-minded individuals, and contribute to a growing movement for change.

You’re invited to come solve a mystery! Join Applied Theater practitioner Ania Upstill for an engaging and mysterious environmental education experience. Based on their Masters thesis project with the Urban Field Station NYC, this session invites attendees to experience a sample session and then brainstorm how to build their own mystery to engage participants in a play-based approach to environmental education and advocacy.