Giant Chalkboard

On Monday, 9/19 at the corner of Broome and Crosby in SoHo, Manhatten, 90,000 people walked by a giant 46 foot long chalkboard with only a twitter handle (@giantchalkboard) and website (giantchalkboard.com). On Tuesday, the chalkboard began to reveal an elaborate equation full of challenging twists and turns that combines mathematics with numbers that are significant to scientific human achievements throughout history. As the painters were writing out the mathematical poem over a 4 day time span, there was only a banner that teased, “Solutionism. The new optimism.” Throughout the execution, people – both math enthusiasts and everyday passers-by - were invited to participate and guess portions of the equation through the website and the twitter handle, which provided clues and prompts to the significance of the numbers. On the fifth day, the answer was revealed to be 7 billion, which represents the soon-to-be world population.