Impulse is an interactive art installation made of twelve oversized seesaws that transform the Broadway pedestrian plazas into an urban playground. When visitors to the seesaws climb on top and move them, the seesaws glow with light and emit randomized musical sounds. Located on Broadway in the Garment District between 37th and 38th Streets, Impulse was created by Lateral Office and CS Design in collaboration with EGP Group, and first presented as part of the winter Luminothérapie light festival in Montreal. When we visited the installation over lunchtime this week, we heard a lot of happy shouts, laughter, and the sound of general merriment on the seesaws. Creos, the tour producer of the installation, says the seesaws embody “ideas of serialism, repetition, and variation to produce zones of intensity and calm” and they “animate the public space and its occupants during the cold and dreary winter.” That much is certainly true. The seesaws are on display through January 31.

In Dreams Awake features six large-scale, figural sculptures by Hudson Valley-based artist Kathy Ruttenberg on the Broadway Malls between 64th and 157th Streets. In her first major outdoor installation, Ruttenberg combines human, animal, and plant forms to allow “viewers a moment to escape from New York's urban intensity with dreamlike fables derived from rural settings.” The pieces are made of a variety of sculptural media including patinated bronze, glass mosaic, transparent cast resin, and LED lighting. I had a chance to visit “Ms. Mighty Mouse” on 79th Street and “In Sync” on 72nd Street. Ruttenberg encourages viewers to come up with their own narrative and “multi-layered meaning” of each piece. I think “Ms. Mighty Mouse” is protecting a walnut she found for the winter against other pedestrians who are trying to steal it (but I don’t know what happen to her arms, that’s very concerning!) and “In Sync” tells the story of a tree nymph and half man-half deer who are in love but are walking to the train to get to their desk jobs even though they dream of running off to the country. In Dreams Awake is on display at various points on the Broadway Malls through February 2019. What’s your interpretation?