The Dumbo Projection Project
Neighborhood-wide, outdoor video art exhibition projected onto Dumbo’s most iconic infrastructure
Massive video art exhibit projected onto the BQE and bridges of Dumbo.
Where else can you see trucks, taxis and subways passing by atop world class video art! Join us for beauty, whimsy and humanity – on display for all to enjoy.
VOLUME 7 RUNS FROM MAY 1– MAY 31, 2026
Daily | Dusk – 11pm
Projected onto the Manhattan Bridge (Plaza side) and onto the BQE Wall in Dr. Susan Smith Park.
Presented by Team Dumbo, with support from the New York City Department of Transportation and NYC DOT ART, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and Leo Kuelbs Collection.
Volume 7: Dumbo Past Present and Future
MAY 1 – MAY 31, 2026
Presented with Gabriel Barcia-Colombo + Gaduate Students in the NYU ITP Program
V7 is an exploration of DUMBO through its history, its present self, and proposals for the future. In an exciting evolution, all V7 works are interactive, inviting the public to contribute to this vision of Dumbo through games accessible via websites, and even just the flashlight on your smartphone.
On view are:
SUBWAVE
by Ryan Webber, Gwen Goins, and Rafia Santana
SubWave uses the sound and waterfront ecology of DUMBO to re-present the East River’s past. Waves synchronized with the passing subway rise and recede, briefly revealing forgotten histories along the shoreline.
HAVE YOU EATEN YET?
by Justina-Maria Soto, Ceren Eskicirak, Summer Hwang, and Ivan Abogado
Have You Eaten Yet? is a video projection about food, care, and the quiet ways we look after one
another. It’s inspired by a simple question often asked by loved ones.
SHADOW THEATRE
by Haoren Zhong, Ivy Jiang, and Zongshuai Zhang
Shadow Theater is an interactive projection where audiences use their phones as virtual flashlights to reveal the journey of a teddy bear. As multiple participants move their lights, different elements emerge as shadows, gradually revealing the full scene. The piece reflects on fleeting encounters and relationships through the bear’s silent travels.
BEHIND THE BRICKS
by Michael Culleton, Jaye Du, William Yao, and Seungmin Yeon
Behind the Bricks is an interactive installation that lets you peel back the walls of DUMBO to find out who’s really been living there all along. Using your phone, you chip away at a virtual brick facade to uncover video stories from the neighborhood, told naturally by rats. It’s absurd, it’s a little tender, and it’s a love letter to New York and the strange characters that define it.
All four works will be presented in both locations, on a loop. Run time for the full loop to be confirmed.
V7 is presented with Professor Gabriel Barcia-Colombo and graduate students in the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program. In this two-year, full-time graduate program at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, students explore new forms of communication and expression using interactive media technologies. The program focuses on critical thinking, creative exploration, and the ability to learn how to learn.
Past Volumes:
Volume 6: Unexpected Delight
MAY 1 – MAY 25, 2025
Presented with Gabriel Barcia-Colombo + Gaduate Students in the NYU ITP Program
Volume Six features a collection of made-for-Dumbo works by a cohort of students in the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), taught by the mixed-media artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo. Students applied to the class Special Outdoor Video Art: Projection in Dumbo, specifically to create content for Volume 6, and were chosen by Gabriel along with Team Dumbo.
Collectively, the works created in 2025 play with the theme of “unexpected delight”, exploring both medium and place in ways that will surprise passersby, encouraging us to once again marvel at the spaces we occupy, and at the infrastructure we share those spaces with.
Artists: Yidan Hu, DJ Kim, Audrey Oh, Josh Sun, Sai Vijapurapu, Timothy Wang, Bethany “B” Wu, Julia Xu, Kyrie Yang, Yilin Ye and Jessie Zhai
Volume 5: Space
APRIL 2 – APRIL 27, 2025
Presented with Smack Mellon and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program
Coinciding with Smack Mellon’s 30th anniversary year, and a decade of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Volume 5 is an exploration of space – what it means to be in a space, to have a space, to be part of a space, and even to be in space.
Visual artist Juan José Cielo performs a series of experiments as artist-in-residence at a Mars Simulation program in the Utah Desert. The Mars Desert Research Station is a full-scale analogue research facility that has received partial research funding from NASA and hosts scientists, investigators and artists. In the short film, “Does it work on Mars?” (2017), a series of objects from Earth are tested to see how they operate on Mars gravity, simulated using high-speed cameras. The experiments performed demonstrate how objects and people are affected by Mars having 38% of the gravity of Earth. In the short film “Runway” (2017), visual artist Juan José Cielo sets up a runway in the desert using blinking portable solar-powered lights to create an illuminated runway on Mars. Then in a space suit, Cielo performs a series of maneuvers using air-marshaling wands to signal a ship to land on the runway.
Visual artist Leonardo Madriz presents an adapted excerpt from his multimedia installation, Letters to Home II (2023). Through a series of vignettes coupled with poetic text, the artist presents a letter to his late father who passed away in early 2020. Considering grief on both an intimate and collective scale, the letter reflects on how places and history link across generations, how memory and loss mark a sense of home, and how leaving is intertwined with belonging.
Volume 4: Wet Nose Pawject
MARCH 5 – MARCH 30, 2025
Presented with Photoville in collaboration with Kholood Eid, Matthew Gilbertson, and Professor.
Volume Four brings the Wet Nose Pawject to Dumbo, showcasing and celebrating the local pups who walk the same sidewalks, ride the same transportation, and sniff the same air as we do. Dogs are as integral to New York City’s culture and community as the people that make up this great city. Whether they are new to the city, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, or born right under the Manhattan Bridge, dogs always find their way to our hearts. Dumbo’s dog community is wonderfully diverse, full of tricks, and always a howling good time – and all are invited to delight in their antics, beauty, and joyful essence on the largest of screens, the BQE and Bridges of Dumbo. “Making dogs happy makes us happy,” says artist Kholood Eid. “We don’t deserve them.”
Artists: Kholood Eid, Matthew Gilbertson, and Professor
Volume 3: Out Here
MARCH 21 – APRIL 18, 2024
Volume Three is a collection of works that blend real life, animation and hand drawings into surreal videos that take the viewer on whimsical and unexpected journeys, all ultimately in the pursuit of creating one’s home.
Featuring work by Nancy Sepe, aricoco, Jillian McDonald & Eirini Linardaki.
Volume 2: Rhythms of the City
FEBRUARY 15 – MARCH 18, 2024
Volume Two is a delightful reflection on urbanism and what it means to live in a city like New York. Playing off New Yorkers’ well known love of voyeurism, these works are at once chaotic and poetic, presenting the rhythm and patterns of everyday life, delving into questions of anonymity, homemaking, and intersectionality.
Featuring work by Nicholas Fraser, Kyoung eun Kang, Josh Klatt and Eliana Perez & Tala Schlossberg Street.
Volume 1: Natural Possibilities
JANUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 10, 2024
Volume One is a “catalog of imagined possibilities,” (according to participating artists Jason Urban & Leslie Mutchler) translating our innermost musings and projected desires into abstract digitizations. The lush, richly colored images ask viewers to, as participating artist Grant Cutler notes, “reckon with automated modes of perception,” each distinct in its own abstracted and evocative way.
Featuring work by Grant Cutler, Jason Urban & Leslie Mutchler, Josh Miller & Angela Fraleigh and Mz.Icar