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Inspired early in his career by Bucky Fuller, Ed Schlossberg's dream is fueled by the power of human interactivity.
By Steven Heller
May 2002
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Schlossberg wears a "Sight Mask" (above) from his 1981
Macomber Farm project for the Massachusetts SPCA.
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Schlossberg got his start in design working with Buckminster Fuller
(1970; above).
Photo by Top, Chris Buck; bottom, Courtesy Edwin Schlossberg Incorporated
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Edwin Schlossberg has long dreamed of building an immense high-tech game
arena in the middle of Times Square where hundreds of people playing together
at any hour would control power grids, move investments, or create structures
to revitalize urban spaces. If this sounds suspiciously like pop-culture
utopia, it's because Schlossberg--the grand master of human interactivity--believes
that games and other shared experiences inspire cooperative relationships
among strangers. Although this costly dream has not been realized, conceiving
interactive environments for the masses is his mission. Schlossberg's most
recent project, the "spectacular" on Reuters's new world headquarters
in Times Square, is not just another mammoth advertising billboard but an
unparalleled opportunity to engage the public in collective experience.
All the public and institutional spaces Schlossberg has designed during
the past 30 years--museums, parks, recreational areas, information kiosks,
study centers--are built on the foundation of mutual reliance. His current
works in progress, including two branches of a children's museum, a hospital
environment for kids, and an arboretum, offer various ways to have conversations
in public places while raising the stakes of interactive experience.
Schlossberg, 56, was a pioneer of experience design long before the Internet
made the concept popular. The inspiration hit him in 1965, when at the age
of 19 he attended a series of lectures at the New York YMHA featuring Marshall
McLuhan, Merce Cunningham, and Buckminster Fuller. It was Fuller's ideas
about "Spaceship Earth"--how to make the world work better for
more people by doing the most with less--that enthralled him. The precocious
Schlossberg had already befriended Jasper Johns and John Cage, who later
introduced him to Fuller. In 1968 Fuller made him his teaching assistant
at Southern Illinois University. At the time Schlossberg was pursuing a
doctorate in science and literature, and his work with Fuller added design
to this calculus.
For Schlossberg design was not about rearranging the aesthetics of the physical
world but making fundamental philosophical changes with existing structures
that would have the greatest benefit for the most people. So in 1969
he helped organize the World Games, Fuller's innovative strategy to promote
human cooperation by enabling players to solve global problems. This was
Schlossberg's first exposure to mass-scale interactive experience and
provided the foundation for much of his future work.
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ESI's latest project is the sign (above and below) on the Reuters
headquarters in Times Square that shows video images of unfolding news.
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Photos: Sean Hemmerle
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In 1971 Schlossberg received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, published
his thesis (an imaginary conversation between Albert Einstein and Samuel
Beckett), and joined the staff of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, where
for six years he designed an interactive milieu based on the exploration
of earth, wind, and fire in which kids physically generated the power
that ran the exhibits. In 1977 he founded the New York- based Edwin
Schlossberg Incorporated (ESI) to create exhibits, kiosks, games, futuristic
teaching tools, and new ways of transforming solitary activity into mutually
supporting networks.
"The idea that you make an experience that requires a conversation
in a public place is training for the fact that culture is collective,"
Schlossberg says. Indeed his design cannot function without proactive participants.
His practice is rooted in the idea that people's experiences of things are
enhanced through the contributions of others to the same experience. Direct
engagement is Schlossberg's métier, and the signature high-tech gadgetry
that makes his projects come alive is not an end but a means to draw audiences
out of their complacency. "The history of the world is alive only in
the nervous system of every body alive right now," he says. "Culture
only exists dynamically."
Schlossberg's firm has created a number of highly visible cultural
and corporate environments, including the American Family Immigration History
Center at Ellis Island; the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, in Washington,
D.C.; Innovation Station at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan;
and the Sony Wonder Technology Lab, in New York. At the ESI offices
on lower Sixth Avenue, where more than 50 designers and technicians work
together in small development teams, there is no house style. The products
and graphic interfaces are guided by functional concerns rather than fashion.
Each commission is routinely redefined to determine goals that will
engage the largest number of people. The initial client meeting is a jumping-off
point in Schlossberg's quest to find greater group dynamics. But there
is another instigating force: "The hardest thing in invention is always
the emotional engagement, not the figuring-it-out part," he says.
"The figuring-it-out part is what you do every day. To be emotionally
engaged, and figure out how can we get a client to sustain a level
of effort in a particular project, is the real challenge."
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