19. Times Square Midnight Moment

Photo by Ka-Man Tse for times Square Arts

Every month a new video installation takes over the screens of Times Square at midnight. The videos run every night at midnight. This month, the screens will be taken over by Jason Akira Somma, a Virginia based filmmaker, choreographer, and self-proclaimed “hacker” who has been featured in Midnight Moments before. This time Somma will present his Times_Square_Analog_Portrait, a conceptual portrait of the very electronic billboards it will be displayed on.

The piece was created using footage of Times Square’s electronic billboards, video feedback enlivened with hand-operated camera movements, and signal manipulation using electromagnetic and light frequency information he recorded in Times Square on custom analog devices. Somma wants viewers to thinking about the space the art is in as well as the tools used to create it. Somma’s portrait of Times Square is one of three interpretive portraits of the area that will be presented as Midnight Moments this summer.