NYC PIT Pop Up

What's Lost in the Waters? Dive into NYC's Flood Vulnerability Index (Open Data Week)
2026-03-23 14:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Presenter: Sneha Srivastava (Macaulay Honors College)
The goal of this project is to visualize the variables included in New York City’s Flood Vulnerability Index dataset. The key visualization is a three-dimensional interactive model, mapping the Flood Susceptibility to Harm and Recovery Index against the median household income of each census tract within the city, in addition to maps of future flooding scenarios. As such, the project tackles issues of environmental justice and sustainability, while addressing the policy implications of climate resilience in different neighborhoods.
Bio: Sneha Srivastava is pursuing her second master’s degree in Data Analysis to complement her background in International Affairs and market research.

NYC PIT Pop-Up Relaunch Open House
2026-01-09 12:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
On Friday, January 9th from 12:00pm-6:00pm, the City University of New York Public Interest Technology Lab (CUNY PIT Lab), in partnership with BetaNYC and the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), will be hosting an open house announcing the re-launch of the NYC PIT Pop-Up after a highly successful debut in the fall of 2025. The NYC PIT Pop-Up will continue to be located at the iconic Oculus/World Trade Center (Main Floor, Concourse Level 2).
This open house is an opportunity for the public to explore the space alongside tech workers, artists, and community partners who will showcase some of the work that has been featured at the pop-up. This event will also serve as a preview for upcoming events to be held in the space in the year to come.
NYC PIT Pop-Up has transformed a public storefront into an immersive, community-facing space where New Yorkers can explore how technology can be designed and deployed to advance equity, justice, and public benefit. Featuring hands-on demonstrations, community co-creation, public programming, and civic tech engagement, the Pop-Up continues to be a living lab where technology meets public imagination.

The Reboot: Day 11
2025-11-06 18:00 - 19:30 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
The Reboot is our time to hang out, reflect on the day’s demos, and interact with the online PIT community.

YourPeer & Streetlives
2025-11-06 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
YourPeer allows service-seekers to find free and low-cost social resources. It’s also a tool to help people assist others who could use those resources. YourPeer helps communities rebuild.
Streetlives‘ goal is to shorten the time it takes for youth (16-24) to transition from housing instability to being stably housed and thriving.
YourPeer and Streetlives are projects by Adam Bard, Executive Director; Gavilán Longino, Community Information Specialist; and more.

Worlds We Carry
2025-11-06 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Worlds We Carry is an interactive installation that invites the public to imagine what we should carry forward into the future, whether into space or here on Earth.
Participants are invited to map the places that matter to them – from corner parks to neighborhood restaurants – and share what gives these spaces meaning. Each pin contributes to a collective topography: a shared reflection on the elements of our world worth preserving, physically and emotionally.
Framed through the metaphor of space travel, the project asks: if we were to leave Earth, what would we bring with us? Which places, memories, and atmospheres would we carry into imagined new worlds? This is a meditation on fragility, value, and care: in the face of change, what deserves our attention, our preservation, our love?
By combining mapping technologies with participatory storytelling, the project creates an evolving constellation of memory, longing, and imagination – a human atlas of what makes life on Earth worth treasuring.
Worlds We Carry is a collaboration between Space To The People and Anna Zhang.
About Space To The People and Anna Zhang:
Anna Zhang is an artist and creative technologist whose practice centers on imaging and reimagining our relationships with technology. Her work has been featured in the Royal Photographic Journal, Real Life, the New Media Caucus, Buzzfeed, and Forbes, and has been exhibited at the National Museum of American History and Gray Area. She is a recipient of the Judson-Morrissey Excellence in New Media Award, has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and is a member of NEW INC.
Aurélie Barbier (Space To the People) is a city planner, designer, and GIS specialist whose work explores how participatory design and digital mapping can nurture civic imagination and shared futures. She has led urban planning and data projects for organizations such as the World Bank, bridging civic practice and creative experimentation. Her data visualization works have been presented at DataXDesign and NYCxDesign, revealing the poetic potential of data to make the invisible visible.

Closing Ceremony
2025-11-06 00:00 - 23:59 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Welcome to the 12th and final day of the NYC PIT Pop Up! Today we wrap up the first ever NYC PIT Pop Up and envision what the future holds for public interest technology.
Closing Day Schedule:
Daily Demos: 2:00pm-6:00pm

Worlds We Carry
Your Peer

The Reboot: 6:00pm-7:30pm

🍿'Tech For Us': NYC Premiere and PIT Conversation at City Tech
2025-11-05 17:00 - 18:30 | The Theater at City Tech, 275 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, United States
How can we use technology to change our city and the world for the better?
Join us for an exclusive screening of Roadtrip Nation’s newest documentary “Tech for Us” + a Public Interest Tech conversation at City Tech! Check out the trailer below and RSVP here!

Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) Learning Lab, “Tackling Food Insecurity”
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Georgia State University’s Library Research Data Services (RDS) Department launched the Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) Learning Lab, a grant-funded experiential learning course titled “Tackling Food Insecurity.” Offered in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024, the course connected students with local organizations—Panther’s Pantry, Wholesome Wave Georgia, MARTA Markets, and ATLytiCS—to apply data skills toward addressing food insecurity in the metro-Atlanta area. Students engaged in hands-on data collection and analysis through three research studies: surveys of GSU students and MARTA riders examining food insecurity experiences, and a qualitative analysis of focus groups evaluating Wholesome Wave Georgia’s Food for Health program.
The project exemplifies Public Interest Technology by showcasing how students can be pushed to use data for social good, blending technical learning with civic engagement. Many participants reported newfound confidence in data literacy, teamwork, and research communication, all skills that will prepare them for future careers in research, policy, and technology. The goal wasn’t just to spread awareness of the ongoing food crisis in the Metro Area, but to showcase how universities can bridge classroom learning with community impact.
Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) Learning Lab, “Tackling Food Insecurity” is presented by Kokou Efou (Undergraduate Psychology Major, RDS Student Assistant) and Nicole Frysh (Undergraduate Anthropology Major, PITLit Representative), Georgia State University Library: Research Data Services (RDS) Department.

UPchieve
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
UPchieve is a nonprofit edtech platform that provides 24/7 free, on-demand tutoring and college support for low-income students. The platform connects students with trained volunteer tutors in real time, so academic help is available whenever and wherever they need it.
At the PIT Pop Up, visitors will see both sides of the experience. They can walk through the steps a student takes to ask for help, watch how the system quickly matches them to a live coach, and get a sense of what an actual tutoring session feels like. On the volunteer side, people will see what it is like to support a student in the moment they need it and how accessible and easy it really is
The problem UPchieve addresses is unequal access to academic support. Families who cannot afford private tutoring or counseling might see their kids fall behind. By making UPchieve free and 24/7, we aim to help level the playing field. The NYC PIT Pop Up is a great chance to show how technology can be used not just for convenience, but for equity.
Presented by UPchieve team members, Mark Espinoza (Program Manager – Strategic Projects) and Katy Laird (Head of Programs).

Robot for Public Good
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Robot for Public Good: Empathy, Ethics, and Play in Human–Robot Interaction is an interactive demo exploring how robots can embody empathy, ethics, and community values while promoting emotional learning. Using an expressive, AI-driven robot, the installation invites visitors to experience how technology can model care, curiosity, and civic awareness.
The demo highlights how robots can serve as learning companions to help children and particularly children with autism develop emotional intelligence and social understanding. Through short, guided interactions, the robot recognizes facial expressions, responds playfully to human emotions, and prompts participants to reflect on empathy, fairness, and trust in technology.
By blending education, ethics, and design, Robot for Public Good transforms abstract concepts like responsible AI and inclusion into joyful, tangible experiences. The project demonstrates how robotics can support diverse learning needs while encouraging the public to see AI as a tool for compassion, connection, and civic engagement.
Robot for Public Good is a project by the Assistive Robotics Tech Research Group @ CUNY AI Tech Innovation Hub led by Dr. Azhar.

App Microscope
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
App Microscope is a tool to display the Internet Safety Labs safety label (ISL Safety Label) for mobile applications. The information in the ISL Safety Label is designed to highlight safety risks found in the app when using it as it was designed to be used. ISL calls these inherent risks “programmatic harms”.
Most of the labels in App Microscope are from the more than 1,722 apps studied in the ISL 2022 K-12 EdTech safety benchmark. New labels are being added all the time. App Microscope is designed for app developers, technology decision-makers, journalists, privacy advocates and regulators, but can be used by everyone to better understand the hidden risks of mobile apps.
App Microscope, a project by Internet Safety Labs (ISL), is a free public service funded in part by a generous grant from the Internet Society Foundation. ISL is a US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Turtles All the Way Down
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Turtles All the Way Down is a hands-on, audience-assisted live-coding demo using Turtle Geometry, a tool from MIT that was used to enable children as young as preschool to learn introductory coding and mathematical operations. The history of Turtle coding, which is rich and varied, touches all aspects of education reform in the US (successful and otherwise) and helps to quickly and effectively explode the notion that “engineering is only for certain types of people.” It has a rapid democratizing effect on our attitudes towards learning (and ourselves as learners) and a rich, proven history of accessibility. Anyone can pick it up in a few minutes, and it works with every modern programming language.
Turtles All the Way Down is a project by Luke Conley.

Beyond the Bus: A Spatial and Socio-Economic Analysis of MTA Bus Violations
2025-11-05 14:00 - 16:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
At the start of 2019, the MTA introduced a new technology with efforts to speed of bus routes in the NYC boroughs. The Bus Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) system was implemented onto specific buses, eventually spreading onto buses across the five boroughs. Beyond the Bus: A Spatial and Socio-Economic Analysis of MTA Bus Violations explores the intricacies regarding the data collected from this ACE system by looking through a socio-economic spatial lens.
Beyond the Bus is a project by Ibrahima Diallo, Rolando Mancilla-Rojas, and Kabbo Sultan, students from the Marcy Lab School studying data analytics and trying to empower underrepresented communities with their analytical work.

PIT Careers Day/Young People's Day
2025-11-05 00:00 - 23:59 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Welcome to the 11th day of the NYC PIT Pop Up! Today’s theme explores PIT careers and celebrates young people.
PIT Careers/Young People’s Day Schedule:
Daily Demos: 2:00pm-6:00pm

Beyond the Bus: A Spatial and Socio-Economic Analysis of MTA Bus Violations
Turtles All the Way Down
App Microscope
Robot for Public Good
UPchieve
Public Interest Data Literacy (PIDLit) Learning Lab, “Tackling Food Insecurity”

Film Premiere: 5:00pm-6:30pm (doors open at 4:30pm)

‘Tech For Us’ documentary NYC Premiere and PIT Conversation at City Tech

The Reboot: Day 9
2025-11-04 18:00 - 19:30 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States

Palumba NYC x WOTB
2025-11-04 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Palumba NYC x WOTB is a simple app and website helping New Yorkers vote at the NYC Mayoral Elections. Based on the successful European experience of Palumba, which gathered nearly 200k users across 27 countries and was #1 in the App Store, this Tinder-style test matches you with the candidates that stand for your vision and values.
Palumba NYC x WOTB is a project by Pol Villaverde (Founder), Solène Aubert (Content & Statements), Lila Potter (Content & Statements), Jasmine Nadal-Chung (Media & Comms.), and Apolline Ancel (Media & Comms.).

Future of Sustainable Buildings: Plumbing Systems & Data for Resilience
2025-11-04 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Future of Sustainable Buildings: Plumbing Systems & Data for Resilience is a project that combines mechanical engineering and data science to demonstrate how plumbing and building systems impact sustainability, equity, and public health in cities like New York.
The demo will feature an interactive visualization where visitors can simulate choices, such as upgrading plumbing systems, implementing graywater recycling, or improving efficiency across neighborhoods. These simulations will generate real-time outputs showing the environmental and cost impacts of sustainable building practices.
Future of Sustainable Buildings bridges the tangible (pipes, water, energy) with the digital (data engineering, visualization, simulation), which we feel is especially important in this era. Many civic conversations overlook plumbing and mechanical systems, despite their central role in sustainability, climate adaptation, and the long-term resilience of New York City’s infrastructure.
As lifelong Queens residents, we want to connect this work directly to the city we call home. We’ve grown up surrounded by the complexities of NYC’s infrastructure, from aging buildings to water usage disparities, and we believe the public should have tools to understand and imagine more sustainable and resilient futures for our city.
Future of Sustainable Buildings is a project by Caitlin Reyes and Erik Ramjattan.
About Caitlin Reyes and Erik Ramjattan:
Caitlin Reyes — Senior Computer Science student at Hunter College, incoming Data Engineer at CVS Health. Specializes in data pipelines, visualization, and civic/public interest applications of technology.
Erik Ramjattan — Alumni from The City College of New York, Mechanical Engineer specializing in plumbing systems at Cosentini Associates. Brings expertise in sustainable building design and infrastructure efficiency in urban cities.
Note: Company names are listed only to provide context for our professional backgrounds. This project is an independent effort and is not affiliated with any organizations.

Mutual Vend
2025-11-04 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Mutual Vend is a decentralized, peer to peer 3D-printable vending machine network where every purchase earns you a share of the profits. Mutual Vend creates a self-sustaining, consumer-owned retail network through two simple principles: shared responsibility for stocking machines and shared rewards from every purchase. Consumers stake collateral to stock machines cooperatively, with other consumers voting to verify the inventory, creating shared ownership and responsibility. Every purchase automatically earns you rewards that can be cashed out to stablecoins or used for more machine purchases. Mutual Vend can also be used for mutual aid.
Mutual Vend is presented by Ron Turetzky, Bread Collective.

Talk to the City
2025-11-04 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Talk to the City (T3C) is an open-source deliberation platform that transforms large-scale public input into actionable insights. This session will demonstrate how thousands of voices—whether citizens in democratic innovation pilots, healthcare workers shaping bargaining strategies, or voters in Tokyo’s gubernatorial elections—can be synthesized into clear, collective agendas in real time. Drawing on case studies with Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Young Women’s Alliance of Australia, the project will show how digital deliberation can be applied across advocacy, policy, and peacebuilding contexts.
T3C is a great example of public interest technology because it demonstrates that AI can be harnessed for democratic ends rather than commercial or surveillance purposes. T3C preserves the nuance of individual contributions while scaling civic dialogue to levels previously unattainable, showing what it looks like when technology is designed with transparency, accountability, and community benefit at its core. Participants will leave with concrete strategies for using deliberative technology to strengthen advocacy, inform decision-making, and translate the principles of citizens’ assemblies into accessible digital formats that empower communities and decision-makers alike.
Talk to the City (T3C) is a project by Adam Schumacher, AI Objectives Institute.
About Adam Schumacher:
Adam Schumacher brings deep expertise in scaling democratic deliberation with Talk to the City (T3C), an open-source platform designed to align AI with the public interest. Adam is Program Director at the AI Objectives Institute (AOI), where he leads T3C’s global development and partnerships. With over a decade of civic-tech leadership—including directing governance programs with the U.S. Agency for International Development—he has advanced deployments with governments, civil society, and advocacy groups worldwide.

WasteNotNYC
2025-11-04 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
WasteNotNYC is an interactive data experience that invites visitors to rethink the journey of their food waste through play and data storytelling. At a touchscreen kiosk, participants “build a meal” from a menu of options and are prompted to guess how much of it can be composted. The system then reveals the correct answer, compares it with how others have guessed, and calculates the long-term impact if that meal were composted daily for a year. To connect the personal to the collective, the display then zooms out to a citywide map, showing composting participation rates across neighborhoods and highlighting local resources for compost drop-off or curbside programs. By combining behavioral quizzes, personalized feedback, and civic data visualization, WasteNotNYC transforms an abstract sustainability issue into something concrete, measurable, and participatory. WasteNotNYC exemplifies how public interest technology can make invisible systems visible, spark conversations about equity in environmental access, and empower New Yorkers to take small daily actions that add up to systemic change!
WasteNotNYC is a project by Annie Chen.
About Annie Chen:
Annie Chen is a Data Scientist based in New York City. She has spent the past several years supporting public safety research for local government, designing studies and applying statistical and machine learning models to make sense of complex data. She is currently a Climatebase Fellow, where she is exploring opportunities to contribute to climate technology and engage in environmental sustainability efforts. Annie brings expertise in data storytelling, civic tech, and community-focused research, and is excited to create an interactive experience that helps people connect everyday choices to collective climate action.

Election Day - Future of NYC
2025-11-04 00:00 - 23:59 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Welcome to the 9th day of the NYC PIT Pop Up! As it’s Election Day, today’s PIT theme is: The Future of NYC.
Election Day Schedule:
Daily Demos: 2:00pm-6:00pm

WasteNotNYC
Talk to the City
Mutual Vend
Future of Sustainable Buildings: Plumbing Systems & Data for Resilience
Palumba NYC x WOTB

The Reboot: 6:00pm-7:30pm

The Reboot: Day 8
2025-11-03 18:00 - 19:30 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States

Trustworthy, Intelligent, & Explainable Robotics (TIER) Lab
2025-11-03 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
At the Trustworthy, Intelligent, and Explainable Robotics (TIER) Lab, our mission is to develop robots for social good. We aim to design and develop robotic systems that not only intelligent and robust but also trustworthy, transparent, ethical, and inclusive.
Our research is at the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, machine learning, robotics, cognitive science, and ethics. The TIER lab was founded in September 2023 at Hunter College, CUNY.
Research Areas:

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI): Designing robots that can navigate crowded human environments, communicate decisions, and build trust with users.
Explainable AI & Robotics: Developing systems that can provide clear, natural language explanations for their actions, fostering user understanding and accountability.
Cognitive Models & Decision-Making: Drawing inspiration from human cognition to design adaptive robot navigation and planning systems.
Multi-Objective & Multi-Agent Planning: Using voting-based algorithms from social choice theory to enable fair, efficient group decision-making in robot teams.
Ethics, Diversity & Inclusion in AI: Investigating how AI and robotics impact marginalized communities and creating participatory, justice-oriented design methods.
Queer-Inclusive Robotics: Exploring how robotic companions and systems can better serve LGBTQ+ communities.

The TIER Lab’s current projects span social robot navigation, multi-robot coordination, foundation models for robotics, bias detection in large language model-powered robots, trust in robotics, and queer-inclusive design.
Presented by Raj Korpan, Director of TIER Lab, CUNY Hunter College.

It's Completely Anonymous
2025-11-03 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
It’s Completely Anonymous (2024) is a participatory online platform where visitors slow down to answer the question left by the previous participant, and then leave a new question for the next person. Instead of profiles, metrics, or surveillance, the project creates an evolving chain of anonymous exchanges, really to be seen as an archive built through reciprocity, curiosity, and care.
At the NYC PIT Pop Up, participants will engage with the platform in real time, encountering the words of strangers and contributing their own. Each interaction sustains a shared dialogue that spans across time, emphasizing presence without visibility and connection without identity.
The project explores what becomes possible when we design platforms that resist speed, extraction, and quantification. The site was hand-coded / developed using html, css, javascript, and perl. By centering anonymity and slowness as civic values, It’s Completely Anonymous imagines a digital commons where participation is grounded in reflection rather than performance.
It’s Completely Anonymous is a project by Emily D’Achiardi, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Shining a Light on 3,000+ Massachusetts Police Records
2025-11-03 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Shining a Light on 3,000+ Massachusetts Police Records is an interactive demo of a front-end platform to house thousands of public records acquired by the ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project on policing and use of surveillance tech by government agencies. The database makes it possible to filter and search within these documents for names and geographies of interest.
Shining a Light on 3,000+ Massachusetts Police Records is presented by Julie Lee, former Technology for Liberty Fellow at the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Collective Atlas
2025-11-03 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Collective Atlas invites New Yorkers to map places in the city that matter to them, entirely from memory. These maps range from meticulous street grids to abstract gestures. Even when participants map the same place, the drawings reveal how differently we hold space in memory: what stands out, what fades, what stretches, or distorts.
Each hand-drawn map reflects a personal geography that disrupts the fixity of conventional maps, challenging assumptions about orientation, accuracy, and authority. Together, they form an atlas of the city as lived rather than prescribed, demonstrating that mapping is not only technical, but personal, cultural, and emotional. Visitors are invited to contribute their own maps to add to the archive, and see, side by side, how diverse our visualizations of place can be.
Collective Atlas is an inversion of power: maps become bottom-up acts of storytelling instead of top-down tools of surveillance and control. In the context of public interest technology, it reframes mapping as a tool of justice and imagination, challenging extractive, data-driven models with intimate, human-scale knowledge.
Previously presented at BetaNYC’s Open Data Week, the work has since traveled across the city through pop-ups, public schools, and artist-led community events.
Collective Atlas is presented by Queenie Wu.

Hometown XR
2025-11-03 14:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Hometown XR is an interactive project that explores the intersections of memory, identity, and technology by transforming digital traces into evolving audiovisual experiences. Drawing from large-scale web archives such as Common Crawl and incorporating audience participation, the project visualizes “hometown memories” through AI-generated imagery and sound. These memories are then reimagined in projection-based installations, creating immersive experiences that merge the real and virtual.
The project raises critical questions about data ethics and representation: How do AI systems interpret human memory? Whose stories are included or excluded in digital archives? By inviting the public to contribute their own memories, Hometown XR reclaims personal data from corporate commodification and turns it into a medium for storytelling, reflection, and community dialogue.
The project engages tech justice by revealing the biases embedded in AI training data and reclaiming personal and cultural narratives from algorithmic control. Through participatory interaction, Hometown XR transforms digital memory into a shared, ethical practice, imagining technological futures grounded in diversity, empathy, and community care rather than exploitation or exclusion.
Hometown XR demonstrates how emerging technologies can be reimagined for the public good. Rather than reinforcing profit-driven uses of data, the project foregrounds collective memory, cultural diversity, and inclusivity. It invites visitors to see technology not just as a tool of extraction, but as a means of fostering connection, dialogue, and equity in civic life.
Hometown XR is a project by Wenjun Chen. You can view more of Wenjun’s work, here.

Robot & Justice Day
2025-11-03 00:00 - 23:59 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Welcome to the 8th day of the NYC PIT Pop Up! Today is Robot & Justice Day.
Robot & Justice Day Schedule:
Daily Demos: 2:00pm-6:00pm

Hometown XR
Collective Atlas
Shining a Light on 3,000+ Massachusetts Police Records
It’s Completely Anonymous
Trustworthy, Intelligent, & Explainable Robotics (TIER) Lab

The Reboot: 6:00pm-7:30pm

The Reboot: Day 7
2025-11-02 18:00 - 19:30 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States

Artificial Agency - SOUR GUMMIES DON'T CRY
2025-11-02 12:00 - 18:00 | NYC PIT Pop Up at The Oculus, 185 Greenwich Street, Shop #LL4345, Level LL4, New York, NY, 10006, United States
Where is our agency in the age of algorithms? During this live, interactive performance lecture by Mengna Da, the audience can control the artist’s body via a custom web app on their phones. As the artist executes the commands in real time, she will simultaneously give a talk on agency in the contexts of data surveillance, body politics, digital labor, and AI. How is the illusion of agency used as a means of digital (self-)colonization? Facing the challenges of algorithmic control and AI, how can we reclaim our agency?
As the performance unfolds with composed and live music by Chienn Tai, the artist begins to share labor and agency with the avatars as well as the audience, creating a system that challenges traditional HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). It is also a social experiment that questions who holds power – is it the artist, the audience, or an interconnected system that generates a more collective and fluid type of agency through ongoing interactions?
Artificial Agency – SOUR GUMMIES DON’T CRY is a project by Mengna Da (NYU – ITP/IMA) and Chienn Tai.
About Mengna Da and Chienn Tai:
Lead Artist: Mengna Da (she/they/it) is a multimedia artist, producer, and designer. She connects people, concepts, and technology to create interactive stories and experiences about agency, power/play, cyberfeminist embodiment, and meaningful discomfort. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Resident in Interactive Media Arts at New York University. (mengna-da.com)
Musician: Chienn Tai (she/they) is a Taiwanese composer, producer, and multimedia artist based in New York. Her work explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of the body and emotions through sound, performance, and creative technology.
After earning a Master’s degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Chienn has developed a strong focus on composition and film scoring, creating music for films and theater, and currently serves as the Digital Arts Curator at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle. (chienntai.com)
