IBM Watson / Jeff Koons

East Village

New York City

Art & Culture

Soon the A.I. will be making its own Animal Balloons

About IBM Watson / Jeff Koons

& why it made the Carpe City list

Behold the HQ for IBM’s Watson.
If you don’t already know, Watson is a fancy supercomputer that uses artificial intelligence and analytical software to answer questions and perform tasks like a human would.
Watson works by splitting questions into different keywords and sentence fragments to look for statistically related phrases. It can quickly execute hundreds of language analysis algorithms simultaneously to provide a fast and accurate answer to a question.
IBM Watson became a household name after making its TV debut in 2011 on the game show Jeopardy, where it defeated legendary champions like Ken Jennings, to bring home the $1 million prize.
Watson was named after Thomas J. Watson, IBM’s first CEO.
This HQ is pretty hip for old stodgy IBM, with things like nerf guns, a penthouse bar and rooftop seating, not to mention the Jeff Koons balloon bunny in the lobby.
Speaking of…
The shiny red sculpture is titled Balloon Rabbit (Red). Created by Jeff Koons, the piece is 14 feet tall and weighs 6,600 pounds.
Born in 1955, Jeff Koons is an artist known for integrating playful pop-culture icons into his art. He is most famous for his stainless-steel reproductions of balloon animals, specifically his iconic balloon dogs.
In 2008, he sparked worldwide interest and controversy by placing a magenta Balloon Dog in an exhibit at the Palace of Versailles.
In 2013, his orange balloon dog broke records by selling for $58.4 million, the highest sum paid to a living artist at an auction.
Since then, Koons continues to break his own records –Rabbit sold in 2019 for $91 million, a 3-foot tall stainless-steel faceless space bunny with the additional panache of being owned by S.I. Newhouse, the famous long-time chairman of Condé Nast who passed away in 2017.

Carpe City Trivia

How do you make a balloon dog?

Because we know you have always wondered…
Here are the steps to make a proper balloon dog. FYI – There are a scary number of videos out there to learn “balloon modeling” as it is officially called. The Carpe City team admittedly was sucked into the balloon hat section and is currently exploring the methods to create a “fish fascinator.”