SWIMMING CITIES OF SWITCHBACK SEA Favorite 

TROY, N.Y. — Three loud blasts from a steam whistle screamed out as the rain drizzled on the riverbank here. And the fleet of seven eclectic handmade ships slowly moved away.

Only minutes before their launching, on Friday around noon, a group of people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, was still preparing for the voyage down the Hudson River. In between bites of jelly doughnuts, the crew, dressed in hipster hillbilly chic, hustled to clean up pieces of scrap metal and ready the boats. In the middle stood the artist known as Swoon in a bright yellow rain poncho and jeans.

It is because of Swoon that this collection of artists, carpenters, musicians, filmmakers, seafarers and hangers-on was here. For the past year she has been preparing for this project, a floating trip that will take the group down the Hudson, from Troy through the harbor of New York to Long Island City, Queens, where the fleet will dock at the Deitch Studios and remain stationed as part of an exhibition beginning Sept. 7.

The project, “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea,” Swoon’s latest large-scale work, is part floating artwork, part performance, part mobile utopia and seemingly part summer camp for grown-up artsy kids. For the work Swoon, 30, collaborated with musicians from the Minneapolis band Dark Dark Dark; the writer Lisa D’Amour, who contributed a play to be performed at stops along the way; the musician Sxip Shirey; and a host of others.

In the summers of 2006 and ’07 Swoon, known primarily as a street artist, did a similar project, “Miss Rockaway Armada,” in which she and a group of artists boated down the Mississippi on a large flotilla. It was essentially an experiment in communal life, and while many who took part are involved in “Swimming Cities,” the new work is more focused on the aesthetic aspect of the vessels.

Swoon said she began thinking about this voyage while working on the Mississippi trip. “From the first piece of plywood that we collected for the Rockaway, I knew that I would do this,” she said a week before the launching, sitting on the dock near the Deitch outpost in Long Island City. Her red hair was pulled back from her face, and she was wearing a tank top, with black paint splattered across her shoulders, sea gulls squawking in the background. “The ‘Rockaway’ was this kind of experiment in all kinds of ideals,” she said. “And working collectively has its own beauties and nightmares, and so does working by yourself. I just thought I wanted a chance to take some of the same kinds of language of the ‘Rockaway’ and make it more of a guided artistic experience rather then a collective living experiment. I wanted to make something which really had the freedom of artistic expression, sculptural and aesthetic and all that stuff.”

She designed the exteriors of the seven vessels, and each reveals her sense of whimsy. Venice “was a big inspiration for this” she said, “the idea that there is this fantastical city perched on the water.” Other ideas that shaped the design included the romantic nature of the sea as well as the way cities form.

The materials were all salvaged: plywood from construction sites, old two-by-fours and packing plastic foam: “anything we could find or talk people into giving us instead of throwing away,” Swoon said. She has been ecologically conscious from the start. “Very early on from the first large installation,” she said, “I looked around, asked myself, Am I really going to clear cut half of a forest to make an installation, is that really conscionable? And of course the answer is no.”

The boats use recycled motors, one from a 1968 Mercedes, another from a Volkswagen Rabbit (itself recycled from “Miss Rockaway”). One uses a gasifier, which burns organic waste materials.

Each boat, which holds 9 to 13 people, has a captain, an engineer, a helmsman and first mate and a crew of deckhands. (A few passengers will be picked up along the way.) All the boats are named. Maria, made of wood and steel, looks like a mashed-up houseboat. During the performance a crew member will swing from a trapeze hanging from the bow.

There’s a canoe called Miss Cuttenclip, with delicately carved-out patterns resembling old lace. The skiff is Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk, the Mohican name for the Hudson. Looking like a large woman in a billowing skirt, Alice is the tall ship, made of wood and aluminum, with parts wrapped in bicycle tires, rope, bubble wrap and tape. Lucille, which primarily carries the band, has nonworking sails, floats on barrels and was modeled on junk boats in Asia. Althea, the steamboat, was built by Kinetic Steam Works in San Francisco, and is made of steel.

Swoon began working in May in New York. In early July a small group took over a gutted house in Troy and used the grounds as a building site, sleeping in the backyard at night.

Mounting a project of this scale is no small feat. Permits for both camping and performing had to be obtained at every stop along the river, including Kingston, Beacon, Nyack and Croton-on-Hudson. And for the trip through New York Harbor, a marine event permit was required. A’yen Tran, who helped coordinate the logistics along with Jeff Stark, said the group had to register the boats with the state. Safety training and a safety boat also had to be provided.

In the end, though, the piece is still a work of art, and the performance is what gives “Swimming Cities” its overarching narrative. On the day of the launching Ms. D’Amour said, “I’m realizing more and more what an amazing set I’m working with.”

For “Swimming Cities” the histories of the boats are recounted in a series of monologues, a structure tailored to the limitations of the situation. “I knew I had to write a performance for the crew, and I didn’t want to bring in a group of actors at the last minute,” Ms. D’Amour explained.

There’s a captain, who is the narrator, and six other characters, played by crew members, who tell conflicting stories about where the boats came from and where they’re going. As part of the action Maria does a 360-degree turn, as the audience watches from the shore. The boats also perform a kind of lumbering elephant dance when they dock, a seemingly routine process transformed into a theatrical activity.

“I’ve never worked on something where the person who is welding the motors on one of the boats” is also a performer, Ms. D’Amour said, “and takes a break and comes and finds me upstairs with his hands filled with grease and says, ‘I have a few minutes, can we rehearse?’ ”

Dark Dark Dark provides a live score, including a work sea shanty. A film crew is following the band for “Flood,” a fictional piece that features the musicians as main characters on the Switchback Sea. The film is another example of how these artists, who come from the Bay Area, Minneapolis, Troy and Brooklyn, have created a kind of expanding collective in which one work grows and morphs into the next.

Though the group is adamant that its members are not hippies, on the day of the launching a retro feeling persisted. A Troy resident, Pete Stewart, 60, who had been watching the construction from his window, said: “This looks just like the ’60s. It brings back old memories.”

Shortly before setting off the group gathered in a circle. The men, in vests, trousers, beards and derby hats, seemed inspired by members of the Band. The women wore everything from light slips to purple jeans and orange crocs. Swoon thanked them for their help. “I’m a little dumbstruck,” she said. A bottle of Champagne was uncorked, and Swoon ran around the circle dripping it into the mouths of her fellow travelers. More Champagne was gulped down, the boats were boarded, the steam whistle blew, and then they were off.