This clever art project lets you feel how high the rent is

While biking the perimeter of Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a sunny August afternoon, the pedal strokes are smooth. On the Citi Bike, I ease through all of Park Slope and most of Windsor Terrace, but as I bike through Prospect Lefferts Gardens, also known as Flatbush, tension builds. When I enter the park at Lincoln Avenue, where Flatbush begins, there is a massive shift in my ability to move. It is jarring, and I’m forced to dismount. I’m riding around with a device attached to the e-bike that manipulates the brakes depending on the levels of rent affordability in the neighborhood you’re biking through. The device is an artwork called Ground Truth, Justin Blinder’s latest creation and part of an exhibition with the same name that closed on August 2. Blinder is a researcher, biker, scientist, and, at his most vivid, an artist. The exhibition explores New York City’s affordability crisis and, through the device, makes the disparities felt on a physical level. While the device is not publicly available, he created it for both the Lyft manual and e-bikes and has biked more than 35 miles across New York City with it installed. [Image: Ground Truth] This work was made possible with mone…