Knock Stop
Prototyping Market Street Festival, San Francisco, US
Traffic lights follow a universal code: everywhere in the world, we move on green and stop on red. Their widespread adoption was also the first indicator that cities would become ruled by cars. Knock Stop is a prototype for alternative traffic lights, inviting pedestrians to take over the street through music.
Routines to Rituals
Created during the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, this project was part of a wider conversation about how the city could work if a major street was closed to traffic and reserved for pedestrians.
Interrupting our routine while we’re waiting to cross the street, Knock Stop invites us to imagine this fantastical city where we live without cars.
The Project
Installed on opposite sidewalks, the Knock Stop traffic lights activate when you knock on them like on a door. Through this simple gesture, people create music and light rhythms and can communicate with each other through the traffic.
Because the other side of the street might as well be the other side of the world.
Process
Daily tous les jours was invited by Autodesk to the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco. The team spent time at their Pier 9 facility, playing with the latest in digital fabrication equipment to build our prototype Knock Stop.
Building Knock Stop
Do It Yourself
You can build your own Knock Stop prototype and transform the street with our alternative traffic lights. As a starting point, you can find step by step instructions on how to work with cardboard for temporary public art on Instructables.com.
Credits
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- A Project By Daily tous les jours
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- A commission by Autodesk’s Pier 9
- Creative Direction
- Mouna Andraos
- Melissa Mongiat
- Producer
- Antoine Clayette
- Interactive Direction
- Pierre Thirion
- Sound Design
- Michael Baker
- Technical Direction
- Eva Schindling
- Narrative Design
- Anne Ouellette
- Environment Design
- Sophie Julien
- Project Management
- Anna Gazel
- Victorine Yok
- Engineering
- Thibaut Lefort
- Latéral
- Structure and Installation
- Sean Cusack
- Sheet Metal Alchemist
- Special thanks
- Autodesk and Pier 9 community, in particular: Noah Weinstein, Sarah Brin, J Sassaman, Tristan Randall, Charlie Nordstrom, Dawn Danby, Raymond Deplazes, Heather Miller, Chloe Chan, Keenan Sterner, Zachary Howard; The all-star shoparone team, in particular: Martin Horn, Josh Myers, Gabe Patin, Mei-Yen Shipek, and Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough; Allies and studio neighbours Robb Godshaw, Max Hawkins, Nick Polansky. Very special thanks to Sebastian Morales, Eric Chang, and our loyal beta testers in Montréal: Yako, Émilie Grenier, François Morin, Fady Atallah, Nicolas Fonseca, and our local Echofab lab.
- Powered with the help of
- openFrameworks
- Arduino