Today MTV unveiled a unique street art display in downtown New York City to celebrate the debut of its new fantasy drama The Shannara Chronicles!

The eye-popping, rustically decaying display stands among the pedestrians of the city, waiting to be taken in and engaged with. Like the show it stands to promote, the display is a blend of fantasy and realism, acting as a subtle homage to the infamous New York City Christmas tree lots.

Hypable was lucky enough to talk with renowned 3D-sculpture artist Kevin O’Callaghan, who designed the piece, as well as the Senior VP of Creative at MTV Joe Ortiz to discuss how they put the street art together and where the inspiration came from.

Kevin O’Callaghan

Can you start off by telling us a little bit about how the project came to be? When MTV came to you and what were they looking to do?

Well I guess it started about 20 something years ago when I first started working with the creative team at MTV. I worked on a lot of iconic events with them in the past — The VMAs, The Movie Awards — I actually designed the Movie Award itself. But they approached me because of one event that we did many years ago called Moonlighting, but we took the MTV Moon Man and we kind of reinvented the Moon Man. And it was a major event with all of these sculptural pieces and somebody had seen that and they just kind of connected that with, you know, what we’re doing now.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

The call came from Jim Debarious, somebody that I’ve worked with many many times on a lot of incredible projects and he really was the catalyst in this whole thing. He really understood what it should look like, he understood the direction of it, he’s been wonderful with this whole thing. I can’t thank him enough. […] The collaboration with him is something that I’ve always really, really looked forward to.

[So] they thought that I would be a good person, the right person, to get involved with this. They called me up and said come on in, we want to do a stunt. We want to do something to promote Shannara, which I had no idea what Shannara was quite honestly. Then of course I went and I read the books and got totally into it. Really, really into it. Amazing, amazing collection of books. And we came up with this pitch. We came up with several ideas, in fact. And the funny thing was that this idea was the first idea I thought of. I actually thought of it in the cab leaving the initial meeting, which was last summer, so it’s funny how sometimes your first idea is your best idea.

What did you use to personally connect to Shannara and infuse it with your own style?

Well the big connection that I saw was that so much of my work has involved the reuse of items. The reuse of things. I’ve done some very big exhibitions where we’ve taken everything from old Ugo automobiles and gave them a new life other than the one they were intended to have. And over the years it’s just kind of been my style, which is reuse. And in Shannara, they use the objects from our time. They actually take old artifacts from our period and they reuse them. They use them for storage, they use them for different things, so it kind of makes sense. But, I mean, I really thought it was a perfect marriage of what I’ve been about for 35 years and what Shannara is about.

We understand that you’re playing off the magical “Ellcrys Tree” element, but can you tell us a little bit about some of the post-apocalyptic artifacts and why you wanted to include them?

We kind of focused on using New York City artifacts, things that you’d see on the street in the city. Since the promo was going to be in Manhattan, it was more fun to do objects that would almost feel like they had always been there. You know they’ve just been sitting on that corner or they’ve been sitting in the street for all of these years. And what made this an amazing thing to work on is, you know, it’s not as easy as you think taking an object and making it look like it’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old. Because there’s this fine line between… The reality is that something that’s hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old might not even exist anymore. It would disappear. It would become part of the earth. So you take a little artistic license where the object is still there, but you have to imagine what nature would do to it. What the earth would to it.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

So I think what we did was, which made this really a fun project, is we had to really think about what a vine would do over hundreds and hundreds of years. What a tree would do growing up through something, you know? What moss would do, what mushrooms would do… And make something that’s aesthetically gorgeous, beautiful. Because nature is beautiful, and these objects are beautiful objects, so the combination of the two should be nothing less than amazing and fantastic. That was the challenge we had. Because there were moments where we were doing this, as you sit back and you say, well you know what this could be? More beautiful. So we pushed it. We discovered new types of natural elements that we incorporated into it. A different type of moss, a different kind of plants, and we combined everything.

One of my favorite things is the newsstand. The New York City newsstand. Because we kind of did a little bit of an old school newsstand, which still exists in parts of Manhattan, in parts of the city. The older newsstands were aesthetically a little more interesting, so we wanted that interesting shape. And then we decided, we took a little artistic license and we left the things in the newsstand.

#ShannaraDowntown After Dark Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

The reality is, years and years from now, the things on the newsstand would probably disintegrate into the air — maybe not — I mean, who knows? Who knows what survives, as far as materials, from our world? Plastic bottles — we hear it all of the time, you know? Glass only lasts 500 years — you hear all of these things, right? So if the plastic bottle is in the newsstand — so is this. It’s a nice statement unto itself. But it’s covered with moss, and it’s covered with all kinds of natural patinas. And when you look at the newsstand, all of the things are there, but they’re covered with this wonderful natural patina. So the shapes are there.

I think people are going to walk up to it and they’re going to go, “Look at that. Look, there’s a bottle. Look at that, there’s a lotto card.” Things like that. So even though they’re not really in your face and identifiable, we all relate to those shapes and I think that people are going to have fun. It’s going to be a little bit of a game to look at this and discover. And that’s what we’re trying to do! I didn’t want to do anything that was a quick read. I wanted to things things where people would look at it, and once again discover something new every time they looked at it. And I think if you went back to this newsstand, four times you’d see something different each time. Which excites me.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

We also did a motorcycle. We did a Harley-Davidson. And I chose to do a Harley-Davidson because the shape of it is so beautiful. Picture a Harley-Davidson that is all monochromatic because it’s covered with nature. This monochromatic rust is in there to ground the whole thing. It’s actually — I think it’s more beautiful than a chromed Harley-Davidson. And everybody that has seen it in person has said to me, “God if I saw that driving down the street I’d be blown away.” So it’s funny how, by going back to nature, something becomes even more beautiful. Because really, nature is more beautiful than anything we can make.

It’s well documented that you have a strong connection to the School of Visual Arts. Since MTV is geared toward a younger audience, do you ask your students for input or feedback when you’re working on these types of projects?

That’s actually a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. First of all I’ve been with the School of Visual Arts for 30 years. I just celebrated my 30th year there. I’m the chairman of the 3D-Design Department. And of course! I mean, the way I’ve always taught my classes is kind of a real world type of an education. Where I go in and I talk to them about the pluses and minuses, the things that go good and the things that go wrong in the real world. And I always like to get them involved. I always like to mention to them what I’m doing, tell them what the project is about, and it really gets them excited. It’s kind of what the School of Visual Arts is about in general. Because what makes the School of Visual Arts different is that all of the professors work in their chosen fields. So they’re not just professors, they’re people that are out there and they’re going from projects and meetings to the classroom sometimes in the same day. So you know, you walk into a classroom sometimes and you were just at a terrible meeting or you were just at a great meeting with a client. And it’s always great to share that with the students and let them have a taste of what the real world is about.

You’ve partnered with MTV before, and many different networks in fact, but what is it about working with this network in particular that you enjoy so much?

Well, you know, I’ve been working with MTV since the ’80s and really it’s never changed. They’re always edgy, they always think out of the box, they have a good time doing what they do. It’s always fun. They give the people that they get involved artistic license to do what they’re about, what their thing is. And they make good work. It’s just a great, great network. I ran to the meeting when they called me. I was so, so excited to always get involved with them. They’re a whole different breed.

And what are you hoping people take away after seeing the display in New York this weekend?

Well, first of all I want them to walk away going, “Wow!” I mean, the wow factor is always big in what I do. But I think I really want them to walk away thinking to themselves, “Look at the effort that MTV has gone to promote this show. So based on the effort of what this promotion is, this must be some show. This must be something that they’re really pushing to the highest of levels, the highest of craft.” And it really is! When you look at the promo for Shannara, and I’ve seen several promos for the show, it is just amazing. The craft, the quality, the filming… After seeing the promo, it put me in the position of having to do the very best work I can do. And I think that’s what we did. So I’m hoping that people walk away seeing what we did and it’s a direct reflection of the quality and craft that MTV has put into The Shannara Chronicles.

Read on for more pictures from the display, a chat with the Senior Vice President of Creative at MTV, and details on how you can see the display in person!

Joe Ortiz

How do you brainstorm the type of promotion you’d like to see for each individual show? Does each one have its own creative team?

Everything is created and conceptualized internally for all of our show watchers. So we have, like, an internal creative agency, if you will, at MTV. And then what we’ll do is we’ll assign teams inside of that to work on specific shows. So we have an internal team that works on all the [material] for Shannara and then we have a separate team, for instance, that would concept ideas for Teen Wolf.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

And then those teams kind of change. Say you might work with one person on one project and then you could work with that person on a different project. And it’s just nice, because that kind of collaboration is fresh every single time. People are bouncing ideas off of each other, so we like to keep those partnerships kind of rotating, which is fun.

And do you plot out all of the onscreen promotion as well as social marketing plans as well?

The same group that works internally on the creative, has a social component to it. So part of our social team is part of the creative team here at MTV, which is really unique I think. And why we do such great integrative work in that stage. Especially around this title. So yeah, it’s a full team and the social team is as integrated as a writer or editor in the process.

MTV has made a conscious decision to start incorporating more scripted drama into their programming, does that change the type of promotional material you want to cultivate?

Yeah, I think it does. It just gives you other opportunities. So you’re creating narratives, and there is a new narrative in the drama space or the fantasy space, so that can open you up to a lot of different possibilities than potentially you can have in the format of reality. Which you’re really trying to create around that specific person or around that character. Yeah there’s different opportunities and advantages on either side, so we’ve been able to create a lot of different types of promotions and different partnerships based off the scripted programming that we have, than maybe we would have done in the past just around reality.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

What stood out to you surrounding Shannara? Was there a central element you wanted to build your promotion around?

We really wanted to play with the epic fantasy element of Shannara, which is at the heart of the story. But what’s really unique about Shannara is that it actually takes place on earth in the Pacific Northwest, so we wanted to kind of bridge that gap between fantasy and that dystopian future that was really special to the Shannara world. We wanted it to be equal parts fantasy and a little bit of our world in the future. So that became a lot of what the central art became for us.

And then I think the Ellcrys tree is a real big central part of the storyline. It really is the centerpiece of the premise and of the quest now. So that became another place that we really wanted to explore. I think that’s where we kind of started to align on — how could we bring the Ellcrys Tree to life, and how can we bring that fantasy world and elements of the world that are so special for Shannara into the real world. And that’s kind of where we started exploring real world experiences and that’s where we ended up on the Ellcrys kind of tree lot that’s happening as a stunt in New York City.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

MTV has worked with Kevin O’Callaghan before, so he’s obviously in your roster of potential partnerships, but why did he stand out as the perfect person for this sort of collaboration?

Kevin is a complete maverick in the 3D-Design world. And we have had such a phenomenal partnership with him over the years that when we were thinking about Shannara and how we could bring it to life in the real world, his name immediately came up because we wanted to work with him [again]. He can make very small things still monumental to the world and he has a really great playfulness and whimsy, a complete match for his artistry. So we were really excited to partner with him.

Photograph by Xavier Guerra/MTV

He is a long time friend of MTV. We’ve had a long history of collaborating with many award winning artists, and I think that’s true of our partnership with Kevin. I think when we wanted to bring it to life and we were thinking about how do you bring fantasy into the real world, Kevin’s name immediately was top of the list. He was our first choice of calls.

Other than just learning about the show or creating buzz, what do you hope to gain from this exhibit in particular?

For me it’s less about marketing the show, although that will happen, for me I just think that if it’s powerful — and it will be — it will spark a sense of imagination in anyone. And that’s really what Shannara does. It’s really what high fantasy does when it’s at its best. So I think with this exhibit, I hope, people will take away in their imagination of what that world could be.

See the exhibit in person

If you’re in the New York area this weekend and would like to see the display for yourself, you can check it out today until 8:00 p.m. at the Gansevoort Plaza or this weekend from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Union Square and 69th & Broadway.

For those who can’t witness the display in person, you can still soak up a little of the Shannara magic by tracking the hashtag #ShannaraDowntown online or by watching the show’s two hour premiere January 5, 2016 at 10 p.m. on MTV.

Additional reporting by Tariq Kyle.