Boy with the bubble

Photo: Paul Notzold

Most people looking a your typical walk-up on Court Street would probably see bricks and mortar, but street artist Paul Notzold sees canvas of a sort. Since April, the 32-year-old Parsons grad has been projecting the images of speech bubbles onto the sides of buildings around Carroll Gardens (and Williamsburg, too). He describes this activity, which he usually announces with flyers, as “an interactive text-messaging enabled public performance,” and while that may sound like a mouthful, TXTual Healing is actually a kind of public forum made possible by an ingenious high-tech setup. “The projector is run by my laptop that’s connected to my cell phone,” Notzold explains. “People can text me at my number, and their message goes straight into a speech-bubble graphic that gets thrown up on a wall.”

Notzold prefers residential buildings because they most directly communicate the idea of personal space. “It’s sort of like in comic-books, where the speech bubble pictured on the outside of a building is actually denoting a conversation that is happening inside.”

The conversation has taken Notzold beyond Brooklyn; he’s also done pieces in Europe and China, and has noticed some regional differences in the way people text. “In China, it was always about giving some friend a shout-out,” he says.

Wherever he goes, Notzold says he doesn’t censor the messages that people send him. “Hate speech would really bother me, but I still probably wouldn’t change it.” It’s all in keeping with his view of TXTual Healing as a kind of public blog. “It’s an act of empowerment for people,” he says, “but in a very small way.”—Howard Halle

For more info, visit txtualhealing.com