Nancy Baker Cahill
July 1–31, 2022 | Nightly 11:57pm – 12am
Displayed on more than 90 billboards each night in July, Slipstream Times Square by Nancy Baker Cahill transforms the dizzying energy of Times Square into a vivid, abstract experience.
To begin with, the video originates from graphite drawings on paper. Cahill first tears these drawings apart and then reconstructs them into sculptural forms. Next, she digitizes these forms into animated sequences. As a result, the imagery evokes a surreal, shifting landscape—like a canyon moving with the rhythm of an ocean or something even more organic. Meanwhile, the animations shimmer and pulse as if they breathe, expanding and contracting with an energy that almost spills into the space below.
By occupying screens typically reserved for advertising, Slipstream Times Square reimagines this iconic public space. In doing so, it encourages viewers to reflect on what feels real, what feels alive, and how perception shifts as digital and analog boundaries blur.
As Cahill explains, “Slipstream Times Square, like other videos in this series, explores the murky territories of consciousness, here amplified at a monumental public scale. In particular, the work gestures toward organic life through simulated botanical and biomorphic forms, offering a familiar reference point without a true natural analog.”
Furthermore, this work is part of Midnight Moment, presented by Times Square Arts, the world’s largest and longest-running digital art exhibition. Every night from 11:57 p.m. to midnight, synchronized billboards across Times Square display a single artwork. Notably, to celebrate its tenth anniversary, the program featured a lineup of all-women artists through April 2023.
ABOUT NANCY BAKER CAHILL
Nancy Baker Cahill creates new media work that explores power, selfhood, and embodied consciousness through drawing and immersive experiences. She founded and directs 4th Wall, a free augmented reality (AR) platform that supports resistance and inclusive creative expression.
Her geolocated AR installations have appeared worldwide and earned recognition from major publications such as The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, and The Art Newspaper. In 2021, ARTnews named her one of its “Deciders.”
Museums and galleries around the world have exhibited her work, including Francisco Carolinum Linz, The Hermitage, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), Honor Fraser Gallery, and König Galerie. In February 2022, she featured as one of two artists in the Elevation 1049 Biennial.
Cahill received major fellowships and residencies. She served as an artist-scholar in the Berggruen Institute’s Transformations of the Human fellowship and joined Oxy Arts’ 2021 Encoding Futures residency, focused on virtual monuments.
She spoke at TEDx events, belongs to the Guild of Future Architects, and earned the 2021 Williams College Bicentennial Medal of Honor and the 2022 C.O.L.A. Master Artist Fellowship.