With just a day to go before official launch, Matthew Soules and Joe Dahmen are testing their Pop Rocks in the Robson Street right-of-way:
Pop Rocks is this year’s Picnurbia – another project in livable spaces from the City’s VIVA Vancouver program. It will be up for just under a month in the 800-block, successfully closed off to traffic for the summer (though at some inconvenience for transit).
Made from reused fabric from the Canada Place sails, Pop Rocks turned out to be a more complex project than Soules, Dahmen and Amber Frid-Jimenez anticipated, just in their physical manufacture.
It will, of course, be an interesting study in human behaviour – and it will be studied. Up on the 19th floor of an adjacent office tower, there’s a camera aimed down on the block, recording activity and even capable of taking infrared shots. Rather like Holly Whyte’s famous studies of New York’s public plazas, this experiment will live on long after the pillows are retired.
