Description

Average Citizen is an interactive data sculpture in the form of a chair from a municipal office that assigns visitors the average waiting time for a  public service. When a person sits, the chair silently selects a wait duration drawn from real, publicly available municipal data and begins counting down. The visitor is not told which office they are waiting for, only that they are now an “average citizen.” The chair does not respond to urgency, context, or individual circumstance. Standing up resets the system for the next person; no progress is saved. There is no indication of success, resolution, or completion. The object measures only presence and time wasted waiting. By collapsing disparate civic processes into a single, randomized waiting experience, Average Citizen exposes how averages erase lived differences. The work treats waiting not as an inconvenience, but as an administrative condition, distributed unevenly, normalized statistically, and rendered invisible through aggregation. 

Video

System

The chair features an embedded light sensor that detects when someone is sitting on it. Once detected, the system randomly selects a wait time from a dataset of NYC public service averages and starts the timer. Public data is pulled directly from munipal data sites such as open NYC Data, etc…

Physical discomfort subtly increases over time.

Leaving the chair cancels the wait entirely.

Representative NYC Public Service Wait Times

The following chart reflects approximate average wait or processing times, compiled from NYC Open Data, city agency reports, and publicly published statistics. Individual experiences vary; the system intentionally obscures these differences.

City Service / Process	Average Wait Time	What the Wait Represents
311 Non-Emergency Housing Complaint Response	2–10 days	Time before inspection or action on heat, mold, or maintenance issues
NYC Housing Court Case Resolution	6–18 months	Duration tenants or landlords remain in legal limbo
SNAP / Cash Assistance Application Processing	30–45 days	Time before benefits approval or denial
Public Benefits Recertification Review	20–30 days	Ongoing eligibility verification delays
DMV Appointment Availability	2–6 weeks	Delay before being seen for ID, license, or registration
Public Hospital Emergency Room Wait	2–5 hours	Time before being seen by a physician
NYC Homeless Outreach Response	24–72 hours	Time before outreach engagement occurs
Public School Transfer / Enrollment Processing	4–12 weeks	Administrative delay affecting families and children
FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) Request Response	60–120 days	Time before public records are released
Building Permit Review	2–8 weeks	Delay in legalizing construction or repairs