The interactive exhibit will be on view through January 14, 2007

As we toil away all day at computers on office floors high above the city streets, it can be easy to lose touch with the outside world. Beginning in mid-November, artist Nina Katchadourian has set out to change all that. Through her exhibit "Office Semaphore," she will give Lower Manhattan office workers the opportunity to communicate messages to people outside at street level.

A project of the Public Art Fund program "In the Public Realm," Katchadourian's work is part sculpture, part viewer-participatory installation. Through a "tourist telescope" set up on the northeastern corner of Chase Manhattan Plaza, viewers will get to glimpse into an office building a few blocks away. Each day, the person in the office the telescope is trained on will arrange a group of everyday office supplies in his or her window. These arrangements will communicate specific messages about the mood in the office and the person's workday life, which viewers will be able to decode using a key beside the telescope.

In "Office Semaphore," Katchadourian has adapted traditional marine flag signaling systems used at sea to communicate urgent messages. Finding some of these traditional messages -- such as "Directions received but not understood" or "Must alter course" -- surprising applicable to day-to-day office situations, Katchadourian has incorporated them verbatim into the project. Others messages she has written in the same language and tone.

Katchadourian's hope is that office workers will use the signals to express the kinds of snags, triumphs, and challenges they encounter in a day on the job. At the same time, viewers will get a sneak peak into the many varied worlds hidden behind the seemingly impenetrable façades of the city's countless office buildings.

The "tourist telescope" will be located on the northeastern corner of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, which is bordered by Pine, Liberty, Nassau, and William Streets, from November 16, 2006, through January 14, 2007. The exhibition is free and open to the public at all times.

To learn more about the Public Art Fund's "In the Public Realm" project, please click here.