This Art Project Slows Down Citi Bikes to Make NYC’s Rent Crisis Feel Real
Ground Truth makes the shared rental bikes harder to pedal through rent-burdened neighborhoods, offering a tangible way for people to experience income inequality.
In New York City, artist Blinder has created a device called Ground Truth to highlight the city's housing affordability crisis. The gadget slows down Citi Bikes as they pass through areas where rent takes up more than 30 percent of residents' incomes. Blinder, a Brooklyn-based artist and contractor at Meta, received a $10,000 grant from Idle Hands, a Brooklyn arts organization, to develop the project.
Ground Truth comes in two versions: one for regular bicycles and one specifically for Citi Bikes. The device mounts on the bike's fork and attaches to the front brake line. A GPS component tracks the bike's location, cross-referencing it with economic data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey. When the bike enters a block with a high percentage of rent insecurity, the microcontroller triggers a motor that applies the brake, making the bike harder to pedal.
Blinder's goal is to make complex datasets more tangible and confrontational, allowing people to experience the city's economic disparities firsthand. While the device is not a working product, Blinder has tested it on several rides, capturing the changes in resistance across different neighborhoods. He hopes the project will draw attention to the rising cost of renting a Citi Bike, which has seen annual price increases for the past five years.
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