Fengyi Franklin Zhu’s Walking Down the L Train is an interactive digital piece that explores the fictional documentation of a walk down empty NYC subway carriages. The viewer can control this process by clicking and dragging to navigate a 180° view of each carriage. Additionally, the user’s cursor controls the distortion of the image depending on its distance from the center of the piece. This interactive piece offers a chilling yet calming subway experience that contrasts the usual sense of sonder one may feel from the bustle of unique individuals wedged into every carriage on a normal day.
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Check out Nene Diallo’s response to Walking Down the L Train here.
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Fengyi Zhu (b. 1993) is an artist originally from Bejing, China, who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Zhu’s videos, websites, and sculptures use code to create kinetic, digitally abstract shapes and bodies. The format, motion, and aesthetic of Zhu’s work derives from reweighing culture and times that he has been involved in by recreating metaphorical objects and symbolic creatures through digital mediums.
