NUMERIC PICTURES
creative + production
featuring the work of DAVE STECK

EAST VILLAGE ECHOS

An Interactive Documentary and Self-Guided Experiential Tour of Lost Landmarks

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East Village Echos is built on first-person accounts of the once thriving live music scene of NYC’s East Village. Its archival activism serves as a cautionary tale told in an effort to preserve the cultural history and importance of the area’s legendary music venues and popular space that are now closed due to the pressures of gentrification, rising rents and commercial development.

There was a time in history when New York City’s East Village was the epicenter of cutting edge artistic expression, especially for alternative music. However, the live music venues became a victim of their own popularity when the crowds they brought into the neighborhood were followed by gentrification and real estate developers. However, the energy and vitality dissipated as rising rents caused venues to close and forced the people who were a driving force in the scene out of the neighborhood and scattered them throughout the city and beyond. This resulted in the concentration of creativity being diminished and the music scene there to wither and fade. This project preserves personal stories from that community that otherwise might be lost.

The project incorporates oral histories, an interactive map for self-guided tours and random access to site-specific information, Spotify playlists of some of the music that came from the area and tools for people to share their own stories. 

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STEP 1 - Check out this video introduction: