Public Art Review issue 41 - 2009 (fall/winter)

Public ArfReview fall/winter 2 0 0 9

GORDON HUETHER STUDIO ART

IN

ARCHITECTURE

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"Solar Illumination I: Evolution of Language", Lynn Goodpasture, 2008 Pearl Avenue Library, San Jose, CA. Collection of the City of San Jose Public Art Program Four art glass windows embedded with 144 photovoltaic cells that provide electricity for artist-designed suspended glass lamp.

Photo: Lucas Fladzinski

"Tidal S o n g " , Trump Bridge. New Rochelle. New York Design Catherine Widgery. 2009 Laminated colored antique glass pieces with additional painting and sandblasting.

Computer controlled LED's and hidden speakers mean the bridge is played like a sound and light instrument with sensors triggered by pedestrians. Visitors are immersed in a shifting underwater wave of color.

PETERS STUDIOS

Germany:

United States:

GLASMALEREI PETERS GmbH

PETER KAUFMANN

Am Hilligenbusch 23 - 25

3618 SE 69th Ave.

Further Information:

D - 33098 Paderborn

Portland, OR 97206

www.peters-studios.com

phone: 011 - 4 9 - 5 2 5 1 - 1 6 0 9 7 - 0

phone: 503.781.7223

fax:011 - 4 9 - 52 51 - 160 97 99

E-mail: p.kaufmann@glass-art-peters.com

PHOENIX OFFICE OF ARTS AND CULTURE P U B L I C

A R T

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GATEWAY

TRANSFER

STATION PUBLIC ART PROJECT, Paho M a n n C i t y o f P h o e n i x Public W o r k s D e p a r t m e n t

2009

C o m p l e t e d p r o j e c t s , c u r r e n t e v e n t s , artist o p p o r t u n i t i e s , p u b l i c a t i o n r e q u e s t s a n d m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n at w w w . p h o e n i x . g o v / A R T S .

Public

Review •

issue 4 1 - f a l l / w i n t e r

2009

volume 21 • number 1

FEATURES The L i v i n g City SUSANNEJASCHKO

20 Taking Space:

Mobile Public A r t : P o r t a b l e & Participatory MARTHALADLY

Subversive Communication & Expression in the City of Fear TAD HIRSCH

Into the W o o d s : 24

Destination A r t :

Brody Condon

ED HALTER

Taking Off JD BELTRAN

—«... GC&S!

City G a m e s PEGGY WEIL

A g o r a s and C o n v e r s a t i o n s :

Virtual Worlds, Public Art & Second Life PATRICK LICHTY

A P l e a f o r the Media A r t s MIRJAM STRUPPEK

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA WHERE ART LIVES

ABOVE: Jonathan Borofsky, Molecule

Man, Mid-America Center, 2 0 0 8 LEFT: William King, Interstate

Mid-America Center, 2 0 0 7 ; Deborah Masuoka, Haymarket Bronze

Rabbits,

Head, Mid-America Center, 2 0 0 9 ; William King, Sunrise,

Wellspring

and Oculus,

Bayliss Park, 2007.

Iowa West Public Art iowawestpublicart.org

and

Circus,

Downtown Council Bluffs, 2 0 0 7 ; Jun Kaneko,

Mid-America Center, 2 0 0 7 ; Brower Hatcher,

PliblicArlReview issue 41 • f a l l / w i n t e r 2 0 0 9 • v o l u m e 2 1 • n u m b e r 1

PUBLIC ART 2 . 0

DEPARTMENTS 13

Soap Box

50

Artist P a g e

54

Featured State: Illinois From the Land of Lincoln, Obama, and Cows on Parade, Illinois revels in its past, present, and future.

JON P O U N D S

LINCOLN SCHATZ

JEFF H U E B N E R and JOEL G I L L E S P I E

66

On L o c a t i o n : Expanded

76

Reports from the Field

coverage of people, places, and projects from around the globe.

66

Green Heartbeat: Public Art Sustains Portland

68

Future Transition: Patience Pays Off for Greater Phoenix

MARILU KNODE

70

Outside the Box: SECCA on the Streets of Winston-Salem

DIANA GREEN

72

Bursting the Bubble: Street Art in Tel Aviv

PAULA MANLEY

MYAGUARNIERI

Conference Reports JACK B E C K E R a n d P A C K A R D J E N N I N G S

80

F r o m the Home F r o n t JON S P A Y D E

84

Book Reviews A D R I A N A GRANT, DAN W A H L , JON SPAYDE, ELIZABETH BERG, C A P P E R N I C H O L S , and JOANNA R A W S O N

88

Recent Publications

92

News

96

U.S. Recent Projects

100

International Recent Projects

106

Last Page Ambient Awareness, Hertzian Weather Systems, and Urban Architecture MARK SHEPARD

www.ForecastPublicArt.org

ON THE COVER C a m e r o n M c N a l l a n d D a m o n Seeley of E l e c t r o l a n d c o m p l e t e d Connection at t h e I n d i a n a p o l i s I n t e r n a t i o n a l A i r p o r t in 2008 (see ]D Beltran's a r t i c l e on p a g e 26). F e a t u r i n g a c e i l i n g of m o t i o n - s e n s i t i v e l i g h t s a n d s o u n d s t h a t i n t e r a c t w i t h p a s s e n g e r s like a w h i m s i c a l v i d e o a r c a d e game, t h e project w a s f a c i l i t a t e d by B l a c k b u r n A r c h i t e c t s .

Photo c o u r t e s y t h e a r t i s t s , www.electroland.net ON THE ARTIST PAGE L i n c o l n S c h a t z ' s w o r k engages c h a n c e as a m e a n s of b r e a k i n g h a b i t u a l m o d e s of t h o u g h t . His g e n e r a t i v e p o r t r a i t s h a v e c a p t u r e d t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n of a h i g h - r i s e tower, h e l i c o p t e r flights, a n d l a r g e - s c a l e p u b l i c i n t e r a c t i o n in m u s e u m s , p r i v a t e c o l l e c t i o n s , a n d film f e s t i v a l s i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y . He lives a n d w o r k s in C h i c a g o . Illinois. www.lincolnschatz.com

PUBLIC ART 2 . 0

EDITOR

UMBRELLA! 2nd Annual

Benefit

Party & Silent Art

issue 41 • f a l l / w i n t e r 2 0 0 9 • volume 21 • number 1

ADVERTISERS

Jack B e c k e r

A. Z a h n e r C o m p a n y DESIGN + PRODUCTION

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Auction

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GUEST EDITOR Thank

you to the following

performers engergy

who gave

artists

their

to Forecast's

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S t e v e Dietz

and

creativity

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR J o s e p h Hart

City of A s h e v i l l e , N C

fundraiser!

COPY EDITOR

City of A u r o r a , CO

Loma Huh

City of D e n v e r , CO 20 B e l o w

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Meg Monroe

Doug Argue

Janet M o r g a n

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Aldo Moroni

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Richard Bonk

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Abigail & M i k e M o u w

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Claes O l d e n b u r g

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

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Bettye Olson

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Lori G r e e n e

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Matthew Holm

Andrea Stanislav

Sarah Hutt

Jun-Jun S t a . A n a

K a r e n Kasel

S a n d r a Menefee Taylor

Candy Kuehn

Katherine Tilton

N i c k Legeros

J u d i t h Van Praag

Dean Lucker

Bart Vargas

City of P h i l a d e l p h i a M u r a l Arts P r o g r a m City of P h o e n i x , A Z

EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE

City of S a n Jos(§, CA

Laine Bergeson

C l e a r s c a p e s A r c h i t e c t u r e + Art Cliff G a r t e n S t u d i o

ADVERTISING ASSISTANCE

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Judy Clifford

Colgate University Digital S t o n e Project

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& Coosje van Bruggen

Steve Coursen

City of P a l m Desert, CA

Jon S p a y d e

Kaitlin Frick

D o n a l d Lipski

Liz P a r e n t

Electroland / Blackburn Architects

P e t e r Van B r a b s o n

Fort W o r t h P u b l i c Art F r a n z M a y e r of M u n i c h , Inc.

ADVISORS

Gordon Huether Studio

D a v i d A l l e n , Jerry A l l e n . P e n n y Balkin

H e l e n Lessick

B a c h , T o m B a n n i s t e r , R i c a r d o Barreto,

In P l a i n Sight Art

C a t h e y Billian, F u l l e r C o w l e s , S u s a n

Iowa West P u b l i c Art

Doerr, Greg Esser, T h o m a s Fisher, G r e t c h e n

Josh S a r a n t i t i s

F r e e m a n , G l e n n H a r p e r , M a r y Jane Jacob,

K a n s a s City M u n i c i p a l Art C o m m i s s i o n

Mark Johnstone, Stephen Knapp, Suzanne

M a r y l a n d I n s t i t u t e C o l l e g e of Art

Lacy, Jack M a c k i e , Jill M a n t o n , J e n n i f e r

Metro

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Myklebust + Sears

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P E R F O R M E R S & INSTALLATION ARTISTS Afsana

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J o h n M o r s e & Joe H a m i l t o n

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Belk's M u s e u m S e r v i c e s , Inc.

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Frank Fitzgerald

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J o s e p h Colletti

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Jim H i r s c h f i e l d & S o n y a Ishii

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Brad & D i a n a G o l d b e r g

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F o s t e r W i l l e y & Valerie J e n k i n s

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2009 GRANT RECIPIENTS

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J o s e p h S t a n l e y & Lori Z o o k - S t a n l e y

Chris Pennington Kao Lee T h a o CLIENTS and PARTNERS A l a t u s , LLC Billboard Connection Children's Hospitals and Clinics of M i n n e s o t a City of B e m i d j i , M i n n e s o t a City of R o s e m o u n t , M i n n e s o t a City of St. L o u i s Park, M i n n e s o t a City of W a y z a t a , M i n n e s o t a CLOSE L a n d s c a p e A r c h i t e c t u r e + Cuningham Group

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Dan Marshall P h o t o

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Revolutionary Screen Works

a n d all t h e p e r f o r m e r s a n d

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The Rutzick Family

i n s t a l l a t i o n artists!

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T w i n Cities F i n e Arts

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D u k e Realty Elderhostel H e n n e p i n County, Minnesota

This issue of Public Art Review is certified by the Forest S t e w a r d s h i p Council

I n v e r Hills C o m m u n i t y C o l l e g e M i d t o w n Greenway Coalition N o r t h e r n Lights PublicEarth Saint P a u l P u b l i c S c h o o l s

Mixed Sources Product g r o u p f r o m w e l l - m a n a g e d f o r e s t s a n d o t h e r c o n t r o l l e d sources O 1996 Foiest stewardship Council

a s both the p a p e r manufacturer and the printer are FSC-certified. It is printed on Starbrite O p a q u e paper, m a d e from 1 0 % post-consumer fiber. The vegetable oil-based inks u s e d are free of volatile organic c o m p o u n d s (VOCs) and do not require solvents to cure; instead, curing w a s a c c o m p l i s h e d using an ultra-violet light source.

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C a m i l l e U t t e r b a c k • Aurora

Organ

S h o w p l a c e T h e a t r e • St. L o u i s Park, M i n n .

U s i n g c u s t o m s o f t w a r e , LEDs, a n d t o u c h s e n s o r s f i t t e d i n t o t h e h a n d r a i l s , t h e a t e r - g o e r s quickly discover that small g e s t u r e s of touch translate t o a n i m a t e d p a t t e r n s of l i g h t — m o v i n g f a s t e r o r slower, u p o r d o w n , d e p e n d i n g o n h o w p e o p l e t a p o r t o u c h t h e railing.

Client: City o f St. L o u i s Park, with D u k e Realty a n d Jeffrey A n d e r s o n Real E s t a t e . www.camilleutterback.com

) o s h S a r a n t i t i s • Loring

Water

Litties

Downtown Minneapolis, Minn.

For t h i s Loring G a r a g e m u r a l , t h e a r t i s t w a s i n s p i r e d by t h e i m p r e s s i o n i s t i c p a i n t i n g s of C l a u d e M o n e t . H i s d e s i g n is b a s e d loosely o n a s e c t i o n of o n e of M o n e t ' s w a t e r lily p a i n t i n g s . An i m p r e s s i o n of a n i m p r e s s i o n i s t i c p a i n t i n g , t h e digital i m a g e is o v e r 3 3 0 f e e t long, with e a c h pixel e n l a r g e d t o a t e n - f o o t s q u a r e .

Client: A l a t u s , LLC

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F o s t e r Willey, Jr. • The Bee Way S h o p s a t W e s t End • St. Louis Park, M i n n .

Paying h o m a g e to the region's history a n d t h e h o n e y b e e , this project f e a t u r e s t w o c o l u m n s , t o p p e d by a l u m i n u m " S w a r m S c u l p t u r e s " t h a t r o t a t e in t h e b r e e z e , a c c o m p a n i e d by a w i n g e d b e n c h . H o n e y c o m b - p a t t e r n i n g in t h e s u r r o u n d i n g p a v e m e n t c o n n e c t s t h e work to t h e plaza.

Client: City of St. Louis Park, with D u k e Realty a n d Jeffrey A n d e r s o n Real E s t a t e . www.fosterwilley.com

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STEVE D I E T Z

FOREWORD

_ , „ Publica Art Media .Technology & Community in the Interactive City

Arguably, the phrase Public Art 2.0 is only a marketing slogan wrapped around a fantasy about the future, hiding a kernel of truth. Undeniably, the convergence of several trend lines is creating new and exciting possibilities for the artist working in the public sphere: •

The ongoing miniaturization and increasing firepower of computing technologies.

• The increasing ubiquity of robust network connectivity.

• The rise of locative services such as GPS and sensor networks that are constantly monitoring the environment.

• Urban-scale displays, from large (enormous!) LED screens to multistory projections to media facades.

• Muscular physical interfaces so that virtually any aspect of the built environment, from tables to sidewalks to bridges, can be interactive.

Architect and urban theorist Mark Shepard sometimes refers to this potent cocktail of enhancements as the "sentient city" and in his "Last Page" (page 106) suggests a genealogy that include the delirious '60s visions of Archigram and its various cities: Plug-in-City, Walking City, Instant City, Tuned City, Living City.

In a sense, these former fantasies of the future are now possible, yet Mirjam Struppek's "A Plea for the Media Arts" (page 46) is precisely a question about whether it is possible to escape the commercial interests that undergird the "interactive city." Tad Hirsch, in "Taking Space: Subversive Communication & Expression in the City of Fear" (page 20), cites a number of interventions that attempt to do so, from works by Adrian Piper and Krzysztof Wodiczko to recent projects such as TXTmob, a pre-Twitter messaging system at the 2004 Republican National Convention, which he helped create with the Institute for Applied Autonomy. Peggy Weil's "City Games" (page 38) examines a number of important projects in which, with a less overtly political agenda, people "take over" the city for their own pleasure, reawakening a sense of exploration and wonder in a clamped-down age where the threat level is perpetually orange. Brody Condon's Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game SonsbeekLive: The Twentyfivefold Manifestation attracted 100,000 visitors over three days. Ed Halter's interview with Condon (page 36) explores this phenomenon for those of us who have yet to dress up as game characters for several days of real life Dungeons and Dragons. Martha Ladly's "Mobile Public Art: Portable & Participatory" (page 32) presents numerous examples of ways that artists have used these new technologies to newly engage people in the city they have always lived in. Even Patrick Lichty's exploration of virtual

alleys and parks, "Agoras and Conversations: Virtual Worlds, Public Art, and Second Life" (page 42), returns again and again to "meatspace," where the human sensorium is most fully engaged. As Susanne Jaschko puts it in her article "The Living City" (page 16): This situation provokes a question about the future of new media-based artworks: Can such art—which is often ongoing, changing, and processual, and which relies on a community of users—be maintained on a long-term basis? The city is a living organism shaped by both quick change and permanence. Processes inside this organism progress at different levels of speed and complexity. But even in times of growing mobility, one of the more permanent parts of this organism is the community that inhabits and uses an urban territory.

In other words, both despite and because of all these new technologically enhanced and mediated capabilities.

Public Art 2.0 is a lot like its predecessor. Ultimately, it is participation that is the difference that makes a difference.

In Richard Serra's famous video. Television Delivers People (1973), the audience is a market, while Nam June Paik's vision was Participation TV (1963). Which will it be? The bombastic city broadcasting commercials—"personalized," of course— 24/7 from the skyscraper to the urinal, or what artist Eduardo Kac might call the "dialogical city": a place that responds, a place where participation is possible, ideas matter, dissent is allowed, exploration encouraged, and curiosity rewarded?

The themes explored in Public Art 2.0—community and the relation of the individual to the community and to the built environment—have been present since the founding of Public Art Review 20 years ago, and are of central importance to any artist working the public sphere today. I hope that this particular issue will bring newfound appreciation for a nascent and burgeoning set of interlocking practices that embrace and extend the praxis and beauty of just plain public art.

STEVE DIETZ, guest editor for this issue of PAR. is also the artistic director of the 01SI Biennial (http://zerol.org) in San Jose, CA, and the executive director of Northern Lights (http:// northern.lights.mn], which presents innovative art in the public sphere, focusing on aiiists creatively using technology to engender new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.

Metro congratulates the following artists for their participation in our Photographic Lightbox series: Eileen Cowin

Soo Kim

Laura London

Robbert Flick

Andrew Z. Glickman

Stephen Galloway

Paul Groh

Colette Fu

Sam Erenberg

Charles LaBelle

Peter Goin

Walter Martin & Paloma

Affirming that art can make the transit experience more inviting and meaningful for the public, Metro commissions artists for a wide array of projects througout Los Angeles County. To find out

Metro

more or to add your name to our database for new art opportunities, call 213.922.4ART or visit

metro.net.

ION POUNDS

SOAP BOX

The Art of Science and Cooking

our lives. Ordinary people have skills, capacities, knowledge, Imagine that every meal you ate was prepared by a great chef. and wisdom that they are not asked to bring forward. Just as While that might seem intriguing, relieving, and extraordinary eating tasty food encourages us to cook, public art should at first, I'm not at all certain any of us would really want to give encourage all of us to be participants in planning and creating up the pleasure of the neighborhood taqueria, that new Asian public spaces, expressing collective values, and playing with fusion place, or our own kitchen. the unknown.

Cooking, we seldom study it as part of early education, I believe public artists and public art administrators but we all appreciate that cooking is something we need every should seek much more public engagement through their day, that we enjoy for its sensuality and meaning, that is richly shared creative processes. A messy, occasionally discordant varied in its forms, and that allows nearly everyone to feel the process can also result in an extraordinary pride of accomplishment in one's "work." aesthetic solution. Those solutions Now, imagine being a scientist who arise because ordinary people can know works with a specialized vocabulary and aspects of a place better than anyone equipment, with assistants to aid you else. An inclusive democratic process in realizing ideas you have worked on based on consensus (rather than simply your entire professional life. Sound a bit voting) is ultimately good for us all when familiar? ordinary people are asked to examine Science, everyone studies when social and philosophical contradictions young—and then we largely leave science and to visualize aesthetic interruptions to the professionals who develop careers of public space. during which they propose, investigate, The challenge is in changing our aesand create responses to perceived social, thetic hierarchies and our commissioning scientific, and corporate needs. processes—with the long-term view in It may seem like a goofy question, mind. What will we create when we set but stay with me a minute: Is our current high standards for artistry and commupublic art practice more like cooking or nity engagement? more like science? And which do we PUBLIC ART PRACTICE How can we attain higher levels of want it to be like? community engagement in our artistic S H O U L D BE M O R E LIKE There is now an extensive public art practices and identify and engage the fullindustry that is like the practice of scienPREPARING A MEAL. ness of creativity within us all? tific investigation. In both cases, skilled Finally, returning to how we think of professionals compete for funding, vismeals, while it is often a pleasure to pay the tab (even better if ibility, and their peers' judgment of which investigations will someone else picks it up) and walk out of a restaurant, let's not produce successful outcomes for the perceived public good. forget the rich conversations that occur while cleaning up the But I propose that public art practice should be more like kitchen after a homemade meal. preparing a meal. We should be skilled and knowledgeable; aware of color, taste, and aesthetics; open to influence by the work of others; and sharing in the pleasure of our work with JON POUNDS is executive director of the Chicago Public Art family, acquaintances, and occasionally strangers.

Group (www.cpag.net)—a position that allows him some time I believe that each of us—that is, every human being—is in the kitchen. more creative than we are typically asked to be in the course of

"See It Split, See It Change" ( 2 0 0 8 )

c D o u g a n d M i k e Starn, S o u t h Ferry, 1 line. N e w York City Transit. C o m m i s s i o n e d and o w n e d by M T A A r t s for Transit. Photos: D o u g a n d M i k e S t a r n

Franz Mayer of Munich, Inc. Architectural Art Glass and Mosaic

www.mayer-of-munich.com

13

A 2006 prototype of the Pileus Internet Umbrella, developed by Takashi Matsumoto and Sho Hashimoto of Japan. Read more on page 92.

Photo c . Pileus L L C / Keio University.

SUSANNE JASCHKO

T

emporary

and

ects

employ

that

increasingly More

businesses

and take

interventionist "new

entered more

the

cities

advantage

proj-

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have

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realm.

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g r a b b i n g q u a l i t i e s of n e w m e d i a - b a s e d

public

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social,

i n v e s t in p r o j e c t s w i t h a c l e a r

community-building lasting

public

nature.

media

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Permanent however,

is

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s o m e t h i n g of a rarity a n d o c c u r s in o u r c i t i e s m a i n l y in t h e s h a p e

of m e d i a f a g a d e s .

rarer

of

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fagades

Even that

i n c o r p o r a t e participation or interaction.

•••••••••

ABOVE: Natalie Jeremijenko, HoPark (one of a series), 2007, New York City, NY. BELOW: Chaos Computer Club, BMenli}hls, 2001, Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

RIGHT: Lars Spuyybroek and NOX Archilekten, H o r n , 2007, Doetinchem, Netherlands.

This situation provokes a question about the future of new media-based artworks: Can such art—which is often ongoing, changing, and processual, and which relies on a community of users—be maintained on a long-term basis? The city is a living organism shaped by both quick change and permanence.

Processes inside this organism progress at different levels of speed and complexity. But even in times of growing mobility, one of the more permanent parts of this organism is the community that inhabits and uses an urban territory.

From this social dichotomy between local identity and mobility springs a desire for sustainable and communitybuilding projects—a thesis that is supported by the incidence of guerrilla gardening. Guerrilla gardening was originally a politically driven, activist reoccupation and redesign of public space through planting and gardening. Since the first public protest of Guerrilla Gardeners in London in 2000, the idea has spread widely and has partly developed into a trendy hobby which today can be observed in many Western cities. Without official approval and bypassing local authorities, guerrilla gardeners are claiming basic rights of free expression and an active role in the individual, environmental, and sustainable design of public space. Along the way, like-minded public actors have created small, local communities and are now connected internationally through Guerrilla Gardening online

color by answering a questionnaire. The answers are platforms. Artists like Natalie Jeremijenko or San Fransisco automatically evaluated and the prevailing emotion defines the based Futurefarmers have built an art practice closely related tower's appearance. The tower, a heart-shaped form derived to this kind of urban activism. With their projects they create from experiments with plastic balloons and adhesive tape, awareness for the lack of nature in our daily environments and has operated for nine years. A factor that certainly contributes suggest alternative uses of spaces—thus turning the city again to its longevity is the feeling of responsibility on the part of into a living ambience. participants, who experience themselves in a new role: as Although new media are social media in that they foster voices of the community and as individuals shaping the shared the formation and proliferation of communities, only a few space of their town. new media public art projects have emerged from grassroots Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Relational Architecture series communities. This may be due to the restricted access works on the same principle, but until now his works were only to public space and the relative effort it takes to realize a installed temporarily. One of his recent projects. Pulse Park, technically sophisticated project. An exception is the famous which happened in 2008 in Madison Square Park, consisted project Blinkenlights, which was initiated and produced in of 200 spotlights arranged in an oval shape. Visitors could re2001 by the Chaos Computer Club, a German-speaking hacker cord their heartbeat, which was translated to the pulse of one community. Blinkenlights ran over a period of five months on spotlight. To leave a trace of one's own individuality, a piece of the fagade of a high-rise facing Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The oneself at this place and see it merged into a shared aesthetic building was turned into a huge screen by installing lamps experience was the basic idea of Pulse Park. Given that urban behind the building's windows. People from all over the world life is increasingly anonymous and that contemporary society could contribute graphic animations and animated text via the is ever more alienated from physical space, Pulse Park offered Internet, using specially designed free software. Additionally, simple video games could be played on the fagade by using mobile phones. Within a short New media is uniquely suited to move us beyond time the Alexanderplatz became the historic m o n u m e n t , as it centers on the h u m a n a magnet for local observers individual acting w i t h i n a social group. and contributors, and the vivid online participation spoke for the success of the project, participants the rare sensation of experiencing themselves as which for the first time created a participatory and interactive individuals as a visible part of a larger, public community. community platform in public space. Further versions were If art in public space is to create a strong connection commissioned by the cities of Paris and Toronto. between a space and its users, it must be process-based, An important factor in such projects is the value of responsive, interactive, or participatory. New media is uniquely participation to the participants themselves. With the D-Tower suited to move us beyond the historic monument, as it centers in Doetinchem, Netherlands, a risky attempt was made to on the human individual acting within a social group— implement a permanent participatory media sculpture that monitors the changing emotional states of the community's hence, according to the principles of democratic society. The contemporary process-based monument mirrors the city as a inhabitants. The tower glows at night in one of four colors living organism whose parts are in constant exchange with its denoting fear, love, hate, or happiness. Every six months, a environment. group of residents is selected to influence the daily changing

17

18

as a public mirror of one's otherwise invisible and perhaps unconscious actions: the consumption of energy and its impact on the environment and the community. Second, the long-term planning and production process involved numerous stakeholders and contributors, thus creating a sustainable effect on the local community and affiliated groups.

Authors of the project, the artist group HeHe, faced the challenge of convincing an energy company not only to provide real-time data about energy consumption, but also to allow the use of one of its factories for the installation. In light of the environmental background of the project, finding a corporate partner proved difficult. Eventually, in 2009, inspired by the success ABOVE and RIGHT: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Park, 2008, Madison Square Park, of Nuage Vert, Helsingin Energia has been the first energy company in Finland to release a large amount of detailed real-time New York City, NY. A visitor takes her pulse, which translates into pulsations of light. information about energy consumption in order to draw attention to the need to decrease energy use in the near future.

Dynamic visualizations of such processes compose This transformation of every-day processes, of "urban another group of forward-looking projects in public space. In flows," into dynamic movement and abstract form directs February 2008, the vapor emissions from the Salmisaari coal- attention to the change introduced to the spatial and social environment. Other examples of such highly performative "live art" include Carsten Nicolai's Polylit T h i s t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of every-day p r o c e s s e s into d y n a m i c (Stuttgart, Germany, 2006), which m o v e m e n t and abstract form directs attention to the change responds audiovisually to changes i n t r o d u c e d to t h e s p a t i a l a n d s o c i a l e n v i r o n m e n t . in the electromagnetic field caused by laptops and mobile phones; and LAb[au]'s Binary Waves (Paris, burning power plant in Helsinki, Finland, were illuminated France, 2008), which also responds to electromagnetic changes, with a high-powered green laser every night for one week. The as well as traffic. laser drew an outline of the moving cloud onto the cloud itself, Without doubt, more process-based, performative instalcoloring it green, turning it into a city-scale neon sign, which lations will appropriate public space in the future. The grew bigger as local residents consumed less electricity. The further development of durable technical systems and sensors green cloud was designed as an ambivalent icon that stood supports this trend as much as the growing awareness of our equally for the environmental harm produced by energy involvement, both as individuals and as a global society, in consumption and for the positive effect of the collective efforts complex societal, economic, and ecological processes. The to decrease consumption. variety and grave impact of contemporary crises shows us that The project, called Nuage Vert, raised awareness of ev- we hardly understand these processes. In light of this deep eryday ecological processes on many levels. First, it served culture shock, it seems natural for innovative contemporary

art to explore territories beyond the safe ground of the final object, the ultimate manifestation of a creative process, and to move to the uncertain territory of unpredictability and successive live generation of form.

The question remains whether process-based and participatory art projects can make the leap from "moment" to " m o n u m e n t " by integration in the planning and building of architectural space, so that participatory works can be kept alive over generations. The time seems ripe, however, to take this risk, particularly where new communities grow and where new urban areas are under development. With MediaCity:UK, a new development in Salford, Manchester, England, it can be expected that the chance for innovative and community-building public art and media will be taken, since one of the main stakeholders is the BBC, which has been entering public space in the United Kingdom with big public screens [see Mirjam Struppek's article on pages 4 6 - 4 9 for examples]. Another site, the area of the Europaallee in Zurich, Switzerland, is being developed with art that, in the words of the public art committee, "accompanies the growth of the city and shapes it in a sustainable way in order to generate identity in this urban area." This objective seems to call explicitly for lasting participatory and process-based art projects.

Although art can only support identity and communitybuilding process in situ and should never be over-functionalized, in the future public stakeholders, administrations, and corporations will hopefully be open to sustainable new mediabased installation art. The field is waiting to be explored and calls upon artists and designers to engage in respectful and inspirational dialogue with local communities.

SUSANNE JASCHKO is a Berlin-based independent curator of contemporary art with a focus on art in public space and new media art.

ABOVE: Energy consumption in Helsinki, Finland, as measured by HeHe's Ntiige Vert. 2008.

BELOW: Lab[au], Binary Wms, 2008, Paris, France.

Krcysztof Wodiczko, Homeless Vehicle (Vmnt3), 1988, New York City, NY. Pictured in use by a homeless man in front of Trump Tower.

Taking Space:

- Expression in the City of Fear TAD HIRSCH

F

rom

graffiti t o guerilla

interventions, a g r o w i n g

theater,

from

info

shops t o

number of American

artists

have been "taking it to the streets" in recent years. O f t e n

combining

elements of sculpture,

engagement,

their w o r k s celebrate

performance, a n d urban experience

public while

casting urban s p a c e as a forum for direct action and unfettered expression. Current practices d r a w from the tradition of street art and a history of c o n t e s t e d public space. Now, a s then, contemporary artists play a leading role in enacting what urban theorists Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey call "the right t o the city": the ability of citizens acting individually and collectively, often outside of established institutional frameworks, t o shape urban experience a c c o r d i n g t o their w a n t s and needs. 1

% | 5 5 1 =1 I | 0 1

Street art emerged during the 1960s as artists were drawn to the street as a vital arena for political and social expression, a place where they could communicate directly and immediately with the public. Since its inception, street art has been fueled by dramatic transformations in urban life. The social upheavals of the civil rights movement and 1960s counterculture are reflected in the guerilla performances of Fluxus and Waltraud Hollinger. Urban decay, the AIDS and crack epidemics, and the burgeoning punk and hip-hop movements fueled 1970s and 1980s street artworks including Adrian Piper's Mythic Being series (1972-1975), Dina Bursztyn's Gargoyles to Scare Developers (1988), Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Vehicle Project (1988-1989), and various poster and mural works by Artmakers, Group Material, and the Guerilla Girls. 2 Street art historically flourished in marginal urban neighborhoods where limited surveillance and lax enforcement of quality-of-life laws created an atmosphere in which residents were more or less free to do as they pleased. Accordingly, the street loomed large in earlier generations' imagination as a site of freedom and possibility, both dangerous and alluring. This attitude is perfectly captured in David Wojnarowicz' Arthur Rimbaud in New York series (1978-1979), which depicted the nineteenth-century decadent poet as a 1970s punk cruising New York's seamier neighborhoods.

Present-day street artists are similarly involved in and | inspired by contemporary politics and urban social move| ments. They find themselves, however, in a radically different | urban environment than did their predecessors. The scruffy neighborhoods where street art once flourished have given way to luxury condominiums; the police officer's gaze, once willfully blind to minor infractions of local ordinances, has been sharpened by fears of terrorism and the rise of "zero tolerance" policing. Contemporary artists confront a city that has been substantially diminished by the post-9/11 security 21 apparatus and the creeping conservatism of late-stage gentrification. Widely expanded surveillance; rigid enforcement of so called quality-of-life laws that ban loitering, open containers, and graffiti; and the creation of new anti-terrorism statutes have made public unruliness an increasingly risky undertaking. The slate of artists arrested in major American cities has grown in recent years to include Shepard Fairey, Yoshitomo Nara, and Henry Matyjewicz (a.k.a. "Poster Boy") for graffiti; Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky for an ill-conceived guerilla marketing campaign involving surreptitiously installed LED placards; and Star Simpson for wearing homemade LED jewelry at Boston's Logan International Airport. Filmmaker Jem Cohen was detained for filming through the window of a moving train, and grad student Arun Wiita was handcuffed for photographing a New York subway station—two among dozens of recent cases in which people have been stopped, questioned, and/or arrested for photographing U.S. government buildings and tourist attractions, as documented in Julia Meltzer and David Thome's In Possession of a Picture installation.

The s t r e e t l o o m e d l a r g e in e a r l i e r g e n e r a t i o n s ' i m a g i n a t i o n a s a site of f r e e d o m a n d possibility.

Among the less-entitled segments of our society, of course, the impacts have been far more severe. According to a recent National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) report 3 , American cities increasingly employ quality-of-life policing to "move homeless people out of sight, or even out of a given city." The report describes an 11 percent increase in anti-loitering laws between 2006 and 2008, coinciding with an average 12 percent increase in American urban homeless populations caused by the economic downturn and cuts to public services. Activists have also been targeted. The American Civil

Liberties Union has documented widespread surveillance of peace groups. Meanwhile, new laws, including the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, reclassify sit-ins and other protest tactics as terrorist activity if they are shown to interfere with a company's profit-making ability.

Faced with growing opposition and threat of incarceration, contemporary street artists have evolved their tactics to emphasize mobility, ephemerality, and covert operation. The Center for Tactical Magic's Tactical Ice Cream Unit (TICU), for example, is an anarchist "info shop" masquerading as a trickedout ice cream truck that distributes frosty treats and activists' brochures. TICU also provides a mobile broadcast platform capable of transmitting live audio and video via a satellite Internet hookup and 12-camera video surveillance system.

Its club-ready sound system can broadcast protest messages or simply transform any space into an impromptu dance hall.

TICU is both functional and symbolic, offering humorous commentary on media control and free expression in public space.

In a similar vein, the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) has produced a series of technological apparatuses for subversive expression in public space. Their projects include robots that write graffiti and distribute subversive literature and mapmaking software that allows citizens to monitor and avoid surveillance cameras.

The IAA is one of a number of individuals and collectives engaging in hybrid art/activist practices that vacillate between museum shows and street action. In 2004, the IAA produced TXTmob, a text-messaging service that activists used to coordinate street protests during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Boston and New York.

That same year, an ad hoc coalition of artists and activists including Paul Chan produced The People's Guide to the RNC, a map of New York created for protesters that included Republican venues, delegate hotels, and other attractive targets for protest. Both TXTmob and The People's Guide were intended to facilitate activists' temporarily seizing and

Ali Momeni and MAW, using their mobile projectors in the Badlands of South Dakota, 2008.

transforming small patches of the urban landscape into sites for the creative expression of dissent.

The tactic of quick insertion and rapid transformation is echoed in Ali Momeni's Minneapolis Art on Wheels (MAW) project. MAW employs video projectors and computers mounted on custom-built bicycles and wearable harnesses to create large-scale projections on building facades, billboards, and other surfaces. Using custom-built software, MAW creates graceful animations of text and image that dance across the urban landscape, and also offers urban residents and passersby the ability to project short messages and drawings at the urban scale. MAW is the latest in a tradition of large-scale public projection projects that enable city dwellers to inscribe messages on the urban landscape, momentarily giving voice to dissent and other marginalized interests. It was immediately inspired by Graffiti Research Lab's L.A.S.E.R. Tag, which allows participants to "draw" directly onto urban surfaces using a laser pointer. L.A.S.E.R. Tag in turn echoes Johannes

Gees' Hello Mr. President, which projected political messages onto a mountainside overlooking the 2001 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Also included in this lineage are Krzysztof Wodiczko's various and well-known Public Projections in which images and voices of Hiroshima survivors (1999) and undocumented Mexican workers (2001) were realized at gigantic scale, creating ephemeral monuments to the needs, aspirations, and vulnerabilities of contemporary urban life.

While decidedly lower-tech than IAA or MAW, Sam Gould's Red76 artist collaborative also works to create shortlived zones in the city for free thought and expression by transforming parking lots and vacant business into info shops that host lectures, workshops, and other events. While the projects often assume the form of squatted or liberated space, Red76 generally works with museums, art schools, and other local institutions to scout locations and secure permissions. These can be demanding collaborations for partner organizations, which must take great care to bound the work within the confines of law and local custom to ensure that projects challenge but don't alienate audiences or sponsors.

A compelling example is offered by last year's UnConvention, a public art festival collaboratively organized by Northern Lights with the Walker Art Center, Intermedia Arts, Forecast Public Art, and other Minneapolis/St. Paul organizations to coincide with the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The UnConvention gathered a cadre of local and national artists, including MAW and Red76, to create works addressing the convention. Participation in the UnConvention required adherence to a policy of "nonpartisanship" that precluded direct criticism of Republican Party policies or politicians. The policy was a necessary enabler for a coalition of local institutions to produce a relevant event in a politically charged context, and was constructed in part to allow artists, several of whom were outspoken opponents of the Bush administration, to challenge the RNC without implicating event sponsors.

Many participants responded to the nonpartisanship requirement with works that facilitated unfettered public expression

by Minneapolis residents through, for example, designing yard signs, creating YouTube videos, or dancing in the streets. Unsurprisingly, and with the artists' at least tacit approval, these mechanisms at times served as platforms for commentary that was deeply critical of the Bush administration.

The interplay between policy and action has also surfaced in a number of interventionist works that playfully identify and exploit loopholes in regulatory structures that shape the patterns of urban life. Rebar's PARK(ing) (2005) installed sod, benches, and potted trees into metered parking spaces to create temporary green spaces for "humans to rest, relax, or just do nothing." The project is legitimized through the act of depositing coins into a nearby parking meter. In a similar vein, Michael Rakowitz' [PILOT (2004-ongoing) provides sheltered areas for "urban camping" by occupying parking spaces with tents camouflaged as high-end automobiles.

Both PARK(ing) and (P)LOT raise questions about what constitutes a "legitimate" use of urban space. The artists conceive of parking spots not merely as storage space for automobiles, but as highly desirable real estate available for short-term rental at reasonable rates. Their implicit challenge is that these spaces would be better put to use serving human needs.

We might momentarily broaden our American focus to observe similar tactics employed by Seville's Santiago Cirugeda, an architect who works under the name Recetas Urbanas. His Strategies for Subversive Urban Occupation proposed a series of architectural and performative interventions in urban space.

ABOVE: Rebar's original MHKfing) Day in San Francisco, CA, 2005.

BELOW: One of Michael Rakowitz's (P)LOTtents on the streets of Vienna, 2004.

23

The project included instructions for requesting and securing permits from city government to install temporary waste receptacles (dumpsters) in public space. Once a permit was secured, the artist would install a modified dumpster that could be reconfigured as a small playground to create a space for recreation and unstructured play.

These few examples of contemporary street art interventions encompass a variety of methods and meanings. They include technical, sculptural, and performative works ranging from the political to the poetic. The works are united by a common vision of the street as a crucial site for the free expression of divergent perspectives and practices, and a willingness to engage in direct action to defend this vision against the forces of fear and domination. Relying on mobility and ephemerality, and often working outside of institutions, today's street artists respond to an increasingly regulated urban environment by repurposing urban space to create zones of free expression and play—for as long as they can be held.

Contemporary American street art is first and foremost an act of resistance against the curtailing of urban experience. It insists on the right of artists and, by extension, all urban citizens to assert themselves in public, to remake spatial practice according to their dreams and desires.

TAD HIRSCH is an artist, designer, and senior research with Intel's People and Practices Research group.

scientist

NOTES 1

Henri Lefebvre, "The Right to the City," in Writings on Cities, ed. E. Kofman a n d E. Lebas (Maiden. MA: Blackweli Publishing. 1996): David Harvey, " T h e Right to the City," New Left Re\iew 53 (September-October 2008).

Many of the works m e n t i o n e d in this passage a p p e a r in the Bronx M u s e u m ' s Street Art Street Life: From the 1950s to Now (New York: Aperture, 2008) a n d Dia F o u n d a t i o n ' s If You Lived Here: The City in

Theory, and Social Activism:

A Project by Martha Hosier

(Seattle: Bay Press, 1991). " H o m e s Not Handcuffs: T h e Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities" (report).

National Law Center on Homelessness a n d Poverty a n d T h e National Coalition for the Homeless. )uly 2009. Available at www.nlchp.org.

T a k i n g Off

A

irports aren't

usually a d e s t i n a t i o n

to look

forward

to, unless y o u ' r e g o i n g o n vacation. W i t h l o n g lines, security

alerts, a n d the stress of c a t c h i n g

a flight,

a trip to the airport b r i n g s to m i n d a n u m b e r of things, but a r t - e s p e c i a l l y interactive a r t - i s generally not o n e of them. At 24

several airports a r o u n d the country, however, that's c h a n g i n g .

A i r p o r t s are building exciting e n d e a v o r s a n d initiatives using p u b l i c art that t a k e s a d v a n t a g e of the a t m o s p h e r e , architecture, a n d functionality of t h e site.

The Mineta San Jose International Airport provides a prime example. When it is unveiled in the summer of 2010, it will not only be a showcase of the latest in new media art, but it will revolutionize the very concept of airport design and architecture, and its relationship to art. (See sidebar on page 28.) Below is a look at what's in store for the future of travel.

JD BELTRAN

Moreover, this is a smart cloud. The sculpture's animation will respond to the weather at the home airports of arriving and departing flights. A live feed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will provide data to the cloud. An additional sculptural display will communicate to viewers which virtual airport cloud is passing above them, enabling travelers at San Jose on their way to Albuquerque to see what the New Mexico clouds look like, even before they get there.

At about 1,200 feet. Hands is an enormous piece by Christian Moeller that will wrap around the airport parking garage, fusing the concept of a traditional public art mosaic mural and a high-technology computer bitmap. Built for the relatively modest cost, particularly considering its scale, of $100,000, Hands takes the mundane materials of black chain-link fencing and small UV-resistant white plastic disks to transform the architectural facade of the parking garage into a humongous mural, which will be one of the largest pieces of public art on the West Coast. A seven-story frieze of upward-reaching hands, the image will be visible from miles away and appear as if a circle of giants are rising out of the earth with their hands raised towards the sky.

Mineta San Jose International Airport: eCloud and Hands Probably the most ambitious piece slated for the San Jose Airport is eCloud, a project by UeBERSEE, the collaborative team of Nikolaus Hafermaas, Dan Goods, and Aaron Koblin. This sculpture will appear to be just what the title implies—a puffy cloud more than 100 feet long that hovers just below the ceiling of the north concourse. Instead of water vapor, this cloud will consist of thousands of small square panels made of electronically chargeable laminated Plexiglas. Each panel will function as a pixel, and three thousand of these suspended pixels will transform from transparent to opaque, creating the delightful illusion of a cloud passing quickly overhead.

"This material has theoretically been around for 10 years, but this is the first time it's being used in an avant-garde manner," says Goods. "No one has ever used it as a display mechanism in and of itself." In a striking example of how innovation spurs yet more innovation, Goods created new technology for the project in collaboration with manufacturer JPL, the company that built the tiles. Instead of a simple binary mode of opaque or clear, Goods' tiles achieve eight different levels of opacity, giving the eCloud subtle levels of density, just like a real cloud. As Hafermaas says, "It helps to have a rocket scientist on your team."

Christian Moeller, Hants (artist's rendering and during installation), 2009. San Jose, CA.

San Diego International Airport: Jim Campbell

| J | | | J § 1 | g J f.

I f | s § § =

Artist Jim Campbell, whose work is on the drawing board for the San Diego International Airport, similarly utilizes the ceiling environment above the airport's main concourse corridor. The San Diego airport renovation involves a doubling of the length of the original corridor that traverses the terminal from entry to departure and arrival gates. Campbell's piece—a sculptural, dynamic "ribbon"—will undulate off the ceiling, at 18 to 20 feet above the ground, for the entire length of the 1,100-foot corridor. This four- to five-foot-wide ribbon will be made of small, frosted glass spheres and cubes, each of which will contain a single white LED light, representing one of 50,000 pixels in the entire dynamic of light and imagery coursing along the piece. Instead of the typical, flat Times Square-style media fagade attached to a surface, the piece will feel like an organic, pulsing extension of the building, "The idea with the ribbon is that it's not simply a display for two-dimensional imagery," Campbell explains. "The piece is sculptural as well, and the surrounding architecture doesn't merely house the piece, but integrates it, as the ribbon flows in and out of the adjoining walls and into the floor."

Campbell is still in the process of determining the imagery for this new work. It will, like Connection [see next page] and eCloud, set the bar for a new generation of "display" that transforms audience from mere spectator to an interactive player in a changing milieu.

...travelers at San Jose on their w a y to Albuquerque will see w h a t the New M e x i c o c l o u d s look like, even before they get there.

26

Indianapolis International Airport: Connection Offering yet another kind of immersive experience is Electroland's Connection at the Indianapolis International Airport, which last year unveiled its new facility complete with $4 million in public art. Connection is situated above the walkway to the terminal from the main parking garage, where the piece immediately signals that this will not be a typical airport experience.

Each person who enters the corridor, which contains two people-movers and a walkway, is tracked by a large red dot on the ceiling. When any two dots collide, they are tied by a "chain" of blue dots. As more and more people enter, a matrix is created of red dots connected by blue dots. Moreover, each individual red light activates a unique sound. Hence, the piece immerses pedestrians in what feels like another world—a whimsical video arcade game in which passersby have become the characters.

In addition to light and sound, additional interactions were designed into the original piece by the Electroland team of Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley. The artists used a realtime hookup that allowed them to observe and control the piece and change the computer's responses. "Once people interact with it," McNall says, "we are always, always changing it. Any piece is like a musical instrument that has never before been played. You learn what music sounds good on that instrument, and you tune it to get the best sound in that space."

Electroland (Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley), Connection, 2008, Indianapolis, IN.

Toronto Pearson International Airport: Passage Oublie Perhaps the most daring of of this next generation of new media works is Passage Oublie, by the collaborative team of Maroussia Levesque, Jason Lewis, Yannick Assogba, and Raed Mousa, who developed the piece at Obx Labs, part of Montreal's Concordia University. It's a politically charged take on what they term extraordinary rendition (a play on the word extradition)—the CIA's controversial practice of covertly transferring suspected terrorists to secret prisons.

In this interactive artwork, exhibited at Toronto's Pearson Airport for 11 months from August 2007 to June 2008, passersby learned about extraordinary renditions by interacting with a world map displayed on a large video touch screen indicating airports known to have been involved in rendition flights. User-entered messages collected via texting to a phone number on the display, along with messages gathered during informal interviews, were displayed on graphics of the flight trajectories and included contributions such as "America has forgotten what it means to be free. They are the biggest terror state in the world," and "Ask yourself whose 'rendition flight' was worse—the terrorists who end up in Guantanamo, or the civilians who jumped out of windows to escape the collapsing World Trade Center."

consumers whose only solace is to buy something from their Thus, Passage Oublie (French for "passage forgotten") expensive stores.... Creating an environment at an airport that became a sly means of turning Toronto's airport into an unengages people, distracts them from the frustrations of travel, expected space for public dialogue, and certainly heightened and possibly even touches them, is irresistible." public awareness of this disturbing phenomenon. Perhaps this was an anomaly, but Toronto demonstrated unexpectedly progressive thinking in even approving such an artwork.

"Many people, beginning with our team, " C r e a t i n g a n e n v i r o n m e n t at a n a i r p o r t t h a t e n g a g e s wondered why the airport authority did p e o p l e , d i s t r a c t s t h e m f r o m t h e f r u s t r a t i o n s of t r a v e l , not veto the curator's selection of our uncompromisingly controversial proposal in a n d p o s s i b l y e v e n t o u c h e s t h e m , is irresistible." the first place," Levesque and Lewis noted.

"What followed was a total collaboration on their part. The only condition was the The very fact that airports like San Jose and Indianapolis exclusion of violent words, such as bomb, and the supervision have embraced new-media art so fully in their designs speaks of a security guard while doing interviews in post-checkpoint to how attitudes towards this form of art are changing. But areas in the airport." technology-based artwork still faces u p hill battles, particularly in navigating the gauntlet of the public art process.

McNall mused about one particular lost commission: "We were picked as artists for another international airport because they wanted a complex, interactive artwork. After months of work, they decided not to move forward with t h e piece because it was a complex, interactive artwork. People love this stuff, but they're afraid of it. " S a n Jose's Public Art Director Barbara Goldstein recalled, "The San Jose community was originally nervous about use of new media art; Maroussia Levesque, Jason Lewis, Yannick Assogba, and Raed Mousa, Passage Oublie, 2007-2008, ^ ^ Pearson ^ ^ ^ ^International ^ ^ ^ ^ ^Airport, ^ ^ ^Toronto, ^ ^ ^ Canada. ^^^^^ new media art was thought of as a bunch of LCD computer The Challenges of Airport Art screens—boring, and not very engaging to visitors... but now, In designing these ambitious works specifically for airports, everyone is on board, and excited about the projects." the artists were challenged by the unique functions, conditions, and movements inherent in an airport environment, The Future of Flying where people are "distracted by their mission—getting to their The philosophies and strategies embodied by both Indianapplane, their destination," as McNall puts it. "You need artwork olis and San Jose bode well not only for new-media art but for that gets their attention but that doesn't annoy them, and that all art in airports, and signal an extraordinary milestone for the doesn't increase the stress...and your level of engagement future of airports. McNall agrees that Indianapolis provides a needs to vary according to the time and attention factor of your great example of the possibilities for cities to embrace even a audience. Some stop and investigate the piece, and others just challenging art form like new media into their projects. "In pass through." general, the Indianapolis people were really great and participated in making it a successful piece. Our expectations were The UeBERSEE team also acknowledged the constraints, exceeded—we couldn't be happier." He pauses, then remarks but were motivated by the challenge: "For many, air travel thoughtfully, "Indianapolis proved you can do it, and it can be is a miserable experience, tolerated only because there is no a great success—and if you can do it in Indianapolis, you can better alternative. Terminals are often sterile, there is little to do it anywhere." distract fidgety children, and travelers are seen as contained

San Jose: Pioneering the Platform Approach Leave it to the valley of innovation and invention to do something radical. In the next year, after a decade of planning and effort and with anticipated funding in excess of $8 million, the largest new media art center in the world finally will be unveiled. It's called the Mineta San Jose International Airport.

Not only will this hugely ambitious endeavor showcase the latest in new media art, but it also will pilot an entirely new model of .how such art is showcased—the "platform."

Typically, municipal buildings grant space for public art in predictable locales—large wall areas for murals or flat work, the ceiling for mobiles or suspended works, and the plazas for large sculptural pieces. Strolling (or racing, if you're late for your plane) through these corridors and spaces does not lend itself to experiencing art. Moreover, public art is frequently relegated to being a decorative afterthought. The San Jose Airport's platform approach turns all of this on its head and, instead, blends not only the airport architecture and space, but the functionality of the space into the art.

From its conception, the project master plan projected an airport that would showcase the latest in new media art: a mandate that presented considerable challenges. Barbara Goldstein, the public art director for the City of San Jose's Office of Cultural Affairs, and the person at the helm of the project, noted that during early conversations with artists and artist agencies, she quickly realized that the idea of platforms for permanent and changing art—particularly technologybased art—could not be taken literally. "The concept of a 'platform' for art had to be thought about in a completely different way," says Goldstein. "Instead of being a plan, it became a strategy to create an infrastructure so that the physical structure—the architectural forms—would not predetermine the art. The concept instead became that of an 'art server'—an activated spine, a pipeline for things to happen. As long as the substructure was flexible, it created options for what we could do." The resulting substructure emphasizes the mobility and changeability of the art—indeed, two-thirds of the work is anticipated to be rotating on a frequent basis.

In 2004, according to Goldstein, the real planning started when the city hired the multidisciplinary team of Gorbet+Banerjee to put together an arts activation plan that would work with the airport's architectural design team to identify, analyze, and propose options to implement such a platform substructure.

After a six-month process, Gorbet+Banerjee came up with a detailed overview of the artistic potential for the entire airport. In it, they identified "flexible technological platforms": sites within the architecture and landscape that would accommodate long-term, rotating programs of new-media-based artworks. "[W)e are essentially building a system that will mediate future interactions between artists and the airport," the report noted. "Because we don't know what technologies future artists will be using, or what genres or themes they will be working with, we must create an environment for them to work with that is: diverse, adaptable, and maintainable...[and] systems that are: flexible, simple, and modular."

The resulting structure, integrated in the airport's original architectural design, is intended to support the art of the present and the future. "We highlight artworks that make full use of computing potential—robotics, data, interactivity," Goldstein notes. "We aim to raise the bar of how people think of new media art." San Jose's insightful and innovative platform approach may well provide an ingenious model for the future of airport art.

Art Activation Platforms Collaboration with the Future The goal of the Art Activation Project is to enable artists to create art within the airport environment. In understanding this role, it b e c o m e s clear that w e are essentially building a system that will mediate future interactions b e t w e e n artists and the airport. B e c a u s e w e don't know what technologies artists will be using, or what genres or themes they will be w o r k i n g with, w e must create a "sandbox" for them to work with that is: diverse, adaptable, and maintainable. In order to accomplish this, w e must create systems that are: flexible, simple, and modular.

Art & Technology as Public Art In our research, it also b e c a m e clear that the nature of working with technology (a constantly changing, s o m e w h a t ephemeral medium) has made it difficult for artists to create technology art in a public art context.

The platforms created by the Art Activation Project are a way to bridge this g a p and allow artists to create public art with technology.

Integrated IT Platforms Idle Time on Airport Displays The airport's Multi-User Flight Information Display System ( M U F I D S ) has dynamic scheduling of screen real-estate on all displays in the building, including ticketing and gate backdrops, Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS) and B a g g a g e Information Display Systems ( B I D S ) . W h e n these displays are idle (if a gate is c l o s e d or the schedule is not full) they are capable of s h o w i n g still imagery and video clips. This capability will be shared with advertising.

Mobile Devices Information about the artworks and the art program can be provided for mobile devices via audio, text- and mediamessaging. Artists can also use this technology to create interactive work within the airport.

For more information: Visit w w w . s j c . o r g / a b o u t . p h p , click on "Airport Improvement."

JD BELTRAN is an artist, filmmaker and writer based in San Francisco, where she also is on the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her San Jose artwork Downtown Mirror was selected as one of the top public art projects of 2008 by the Public Art Network of Americans for the Arts.

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THIS PAGE: From the Mineta San Jose International Airport in Activation Project Schematic Proposal (September 27,2005) by Matt Gorbert, Susan Gorbert, and Banny Banerjee.

BELOW: Distributed generative screensaver by Scott Oraves of Electric Sheep (www.electricsheep.org) and cellphone-based interactive installation by SEED (www.seedcollective.ca).

29

Connection at Indianapolis International Airport E L E C T R O L A N D - electroland.net

B L A C K B U R N ARCHITECTS INC - b l a c k b u r n a r c h i t e c t s . c o m

Art Program arrive; depart, be inspired...

temporary exhibits music dance theater public art okrt

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Hugo Heredia, broken chandelier; Nancy McGehee, Glass vessel; San Diego Guild of Puppetry, Circus Minimus; Christie Beniston.Time Interwoven; High Tech High School, Calculicious; Taylor Guitar exhibit; Japan Society, Fan

art.sari.org ©2009 San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. AU rights reserved.

Mobile Public Art Portable ^

MARTHA LADLY

Participatory

If you haven't experienced a mobile public art installation, you aren't

alone You may even question

its existence as an art form. But mobile art is a growing phenomenon, attracting new artists who see the potential for engaging new audiences, in both urban and remote public environments. Mobile artworks are potentially ubiquitous and playful, possible and everywhere. All that is required to participate is your presence in a particular public place, your intention to investigate or play, and a mobile device. The mobile devices (usually mobile phones and portable digital assistants) act as interfaces to the artworks, but portable C D players and computers, bicycles and cars, buildings, parks, 32

trails, forests, and even mountains, have all been construed as media elements and interfaces for mobile public art.

By its very definition, mobile art is ephemeral and its location and audience are usually on the move. Although they may be transmitted and consumed publicly, mobile artworks are often not actually "installed" in public space. Many artists in the mobile realm also use the Internet as a public forum and the computer database as media storage, so most mobile works have links to both real and virtual space. Because mobile art projects are also distributed in nature (often across a network of GPS-enabled devices), they are rarely instantiations fixed in time and place, in the way that we usually think of public art. And while some mobile artworks are fixed or particular to a location, others are "location aware": triggered or accessed locally by the audience from a particular location.

Locative media is a useful term that was coined by Karlis Kalnins, a Web artist, mapper, and media activist. In 2003, Kalnins used the term as a test category for processes that could facilitate the digital annotation of physical space, by combining mobile data communications with GPS and mobile computing. Its catalyst was growing civilian awareness of and engagement with a set of tools and virtual constructs of military origin.

In the summer of 2003, the media art collective RIXC, an international network of researchers working with mobile, context-aware, computing devices and applications, held its first "location-based" workshops at K@2, a cultural center on the site of an abandoned Soviet military installation in Liepaja, Latvia, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits,

Latvian artists who were working with the Acoustic Space Lab project at the RT:32 radio telescope in Karosta, led a series of transcultural mapping workshops to further explore the territory. Locative artists and researchers found their artistic proposals forced them to face profound and explicit interdimensionality—for example, the ability to simultaneously move through physical space and electronic space. Their work acknowledged the potential of Global Positioning System (GPS, a satellite-based navigation technology created by the U.S. military), adapting it for geographically and socially mediated artworks. With the introduction of GPS and mobile technology into the public realm, they saw new possibilities for social interaction and "a way to reclaim public space as a site for a new kind of shared experience."

Long before K@2, a number of pioneer artists were laying the groundwork for mobile public art, using combinations of location awareness and mobile technologies.

In 1991, Janet Cardiff created her first audio walk at the Banff Centre in Alberta. Forest Walk guided participants with an audio cassette deck and headphones through the local pine forest, offering walking directions and observations interspersed with a dramatic audio dialogue. She admits that the instructions were difficult to follow and the sound quality wasn't great, but it changed the artist's thinking about the potential for this new form, and became the prototype for all of her later audio walk artworks. Masaki Fujihata, one of the pioneers of Japanese new media art, created an early locative work in 1992, using a car-mounted laptop computer equipped with GPS and a video camera to create a locative image map of Mount Fuji.

Masaki Fujihata, Impressing Velocity, 1992-94. The artist's pioneering locative mapping project created a 30 dataset featuring Mount Fuji in a series of computer-generated images displaying a virtual eruption of Japan's holy volcano. Fujihata used a laptop computer equipped with GPS to digitally map the mountain, making it available for viewers to explore interactively. He believes that "reality does not conflict with virtuality: It is the complementary aspect of a similar space of life."

5 3 i

7 | 34

His resulting artwork Impressing Velocity made the data and images available for viewers to explore interactively.

In 1999, artist Teri Rueb launched Trace, one of the first geo-annotated mobile art projects, using GPS coordinates embedded in the landscape to access a database. Her interactive walk was a memorial environmental sound installation, created as a site-specific response to the network of hiking trails near the Burgess Shale fossil beds in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. This work was a precursor to the phenomenon of mobile public art: participants carried a custom knapsack equipped with a portable computer, headphones, and a GPS receiver, as they wove their way through memorial poems, songs, and stories (contributed by collaborators), that played in response to their movements through the landscape, triggered

by GPS coordinates.

Another group of mobile public art projects, Global Heart Rate, developed in 2005 by researcher Angus Leech and the members of the Banff New Media Centre's Art Mobile Lab, explored the mountain environment of Banff National Park's Hoodoo Trail. Participants role-played as aboriginal forest creatures: the Raven, Wolf, and Bear, interacting with a Coyote Trickster. Other activities incorporated accelerometers (a precursor to those now embedded in mobile devices) mounted on wristbands that allowed participants to throw mutating flowers back and forth from one mobile device to another. Walking Man was a surreal location-based mobile cinema project, developed by lab member Geoff Lillemon.

A bizarre story unfolded as the participant walked the trail, tracked by GPS. A recurring theme in these seminal mobile location-based artworks is their situation in remote environments, wilderness parks, and places that require participants to rely on the senses, powers of observation, and physical fitness. Participants using small portable technologies were able to navigate landscape-based links to the artist's works, but only by also locating themselves in the artist's chosen, often difficult, and wildly beautiful locales. Mobile public art gave artists and audiences—who are active participants—their bodies back, and expected them to be up to the physical challenges!

These artworks were also among the first to investigate the convergence of geographical place and data space, reversing the idea that digital art only existed in placeless virtual locations, usually accessed on computers via the Internet. Drew Hemment, a scholar of locative media, remarks that "while the 'true' location of the artistic content is a database, by making it possible to access that content from a particular position, its place migrates into the physical environment. Locative art's focus on digital authoring within the environment, on a dynamic relationship between database and the world, offers the chance to take art out of the galleries and off the screen."

Increasingly, mobile artists find their locations in urban environments, where mobile signals from cell towers are readily accessible and much larger audiences may experience their work. Many of their projects are representations of how people occupy and use urban public space, offering an evocative portrait of the past and current life of the city, its residents, and visitors.

In 2003, signs depicting a large green ear inscribed with a telephone number appeared on lampposts in Toronto's Kensington Market. They were a part of the [murmur] project, developed by artist-designers Shawn Micallef, fames Roussel, and Gabe Sawhney, students at the Canadian Film Centre's Media Lab. Calling the number on the sign with your cell phone, you can hear a short recording from someone who has a story to tell about the house, back alley, market stall,

Participant wearing headphone and knapsack with computer/GPS receiver, as part of Teri Rueb's Trace, 1999, in Yoho National Park, British Columbia.

synagogue, cinema, restaurant, club, or theater outside which you are standing. Their stories are personal, and as diverse as the neighborhood itself. The green ear signs can now be found in eight other neighborhoods across Toronto, as well as in Montreal and Vancouver. Green ears are popping up in international locations as far away as Edinburgh and Dublin, Sao Paulo and San Jose, all designating local storytelling mobile art projects that have been codeveloped with local residents and the [murmur] team.

The incorporation of GPS and Bluetooth technologies into mobile handsets opened a world of possibilities for shortrange mobile-to-mobile networking and enabled less technologically encumbered experiences for mobile art participants.

Some of these projects have been envisioned as participatory audio projects. Alter Audio, developed by Paula Gardner and Geoffrey Shea as part of the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) in 2006, enhanced the urban environment with GPSlocated vocal choirs and loops of ambient sound. Participants congregated in locations in Toronto and Montreal, and interacted together musically, or used gesture and Bluetooth proximity to collaborate with audio effects in the prerecorded audio libraries on their mobile devices. In this way, even inexperienced participants could become mobile musicians, composing sound and music over time and across distance to create live musical collaborations.

Another mobile urban audio intervention is the Tactical Sound Garden (TSG) Toolkit (see page 106), an open-source software platform developed by Mark Shepard, for cultivating public sound gardens in urban public space. He describes the Toolkit as "a parasitic technology, which feeds on the propagation of WiFi access points in dense urban environments as free, ready-made, locative infrastructures." TSG enables anyone living within a wireless hot zone to install a sound garden for

developed the project with over 140 young artists, helping them to develop a sense of inclusion, power, a n d participation in their community.

Park Walk is a mobile public art project that I developed with Bruce Hinds in 2006, as part of our research with the MDCN. Park Walk is a social and environmental m a p p i n g project that delivers historical, cultural, a n d user-generated stories contributed by the local c o m m u n i t y in Toronto.

The project engages aspects of urban orientation and nature identification, local cultural activities, historical insight, and bioregional mapping, using audiovisual narratives on a prepared mobile device, triggered

by GPS locations in an urban park.

A far cry from a didactic local culture or field guide, the project lays a veil of relevant information over the Shawn Micailef, James Roussel, and Gabe Sawhney,[murmur], 2003, Kensington Market, Toronto, Canada (www.murmurtoronto.ca). park, creating a psychogeography of shared public space. public use, by planting sounds which are m a p p e d onto the coordinates of the city with a 3D audio engine commonly used in gaming environments. TSG draws on the culture of community gardening to create a participatory environment, allowing people wearing headphones connected to their Smartphone or WiFi device to drift though virtual sound gardens as they move around the city. In 2007, sound gardens were planted in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), San Diego, and Zurich.

Speed, agility, and mobility are brought together in artist Julie Andreyev's Four Wheel Drift, part of a suite of interactive performance projects designed for vehicles in urban environments, where cars function as platforms for information gathering and dissemination. Local passengers act as guides for the production of an audio and video archive of their chosen route, with their local knowledge determining visual mapping of the city and its vernacular. During a performance of VJFleet, music and video are manipulated and mixed with VJ techniques (using data such as engine function, acceleration, speed and direction, braking, and turning). With both art pieces, video is projected on panoramic screens mounted on the moving cars, making it accessible to the public.

At a more leisurely pace, Rider Spoke is a mobile public art project for urban cyclists by Blast Theory. Participants cycle alone in the city at night, equipped with a h a n d h e l d computer attached to their handlebars. They find a hiding place to record a short message in response to a question posed, and then search for the hiding places of other participants. The idea is to become immersed in a private experience that combines theater with mobile game play in a public urban environment.

Rider Spoke was created in October 2007 for the Barbican neighborhood in London, and has been adapted for audiences in Brighton, Athens, Budapest, Sydney, and Adelaide.

Mobile public art can be used as a force for community building and change. In April 2008, a series of mobile public artworks were h i d d e n in secret locations around the streets of Melbourne. Visitors used their mobile phones to find and interact with the A-Lure projects: digital projections, video and sound works, and a huge photographic light box. Clues were sent via mobile SMS (text messages) in a sort of public art scavenger hunt. Visionary Images (VI), a not-for-profit dedicated to engaging local youth who have experienced hardship.

There are rewards, but also challenges and barriers to the creation and deployment of mobile public art. These include the costs of developing, programming, and engineering mobile artworks, and the costs and charges to participants for using mobile networks, particularly w h e n data charges are incurred.

There are looming issues regarding intellectual property and data sharing for authors, service providers, a n d participants alike, and many wait to see h o w these arguments will resolve.

Issues of personal choice regarding the use and ubiquity of mobile devices in public space are only beginning to be addressed.

That said, frameworks that encourage mobile experiences through collaborative artistic interchange offer artists and their audiences opportunities to develop new conversations in this complex, emerging, and vibrant field of public art.

Julie Andreyev's off-site performance, VJFleet [reduxj at SIGGRAPH, 2006, Boston, MA.

MARTHA LADLY is an artist, author, and co-editor of Mobile Nation: Creating Methodologies for Mobile Platforms. She is an associate professor and senior researcher at the Ontario College of Art Sr Design in Toronto, Canada.

35

Intn thfi Wnnrls Brody Condon Interview by ED HALTER

S

ome visitors to the 10th Sonsbeek Sculpture

Exhibition

something

rather

International

would have stumbled unusual

during

the

onto

summer

the sculpture exhibition. Set in a far future world, the g a m e posited that the sculptures were physical representatives of immortal god-like beings; each group of LARPers determined for themselves what rituals they would undertake before the sculptures. "The LARP will be seen

of 2008.

Strolling

160-acre

Sonsbeek

sculptures

through

the Dutch city of

Park, filled annually with

and installations

Arnhem's large-scale

for the event, viewers

have glimpsed ragtag bands of men and women,

as a work of live public art by the thousands of viewers who will visit the park during the summer," Condon and Pedersen wrote in a players'

might

guide. "Normally w e do not have outside viewers watching us play, but

dressed

here it is our goal to integrate this element into the event in such a way that does not interrupt g a m e flow."

in outfits reminiscent 36

of The Road Warrior, gathered

in Condon has worked with permutations of gaming and performance

groups

around

the sculptures,

engaged

in what

would

have looked like arcane rituals or fierce duels.

for years, inspired by the work of figures like Ann Hamilton and video's first decade of studio tapes, reconsidered for the digital age. In an early work, Adam Killer ( 1 9 9 9 - 2 0 0 1 ) , Condon built a series of doppelgangers

These post-apocalyptic tribes were in fact part of the exhibition:

of his friend Adam within a customizable video game, shooting t h e m

a session of Live-Action Role-Playing, or LARPing, staged by American

over and over again. Created collaboratively with other m e m b e r s of

artist Brody Condon under the title SonsbeekLive:

the collective C-Level, Waco Resurrection

Manifestation.

The

TwentyfiveFold

LARPing is a quasi-theatrical, improvisatory practice devel-

( 2 0 0 3 ) is a computer g a m e

in which players take the role of David Koresh, fighting off government

oped more than two decades ago by fans of pen-and-paper fantasy role-

agents with powers from God. For Death

playing g a m e s like Dungeons and Dragons. For SonsbeekLive,

Animations

(2006), Condon

Condon

brought actors dressed in medieval gear into a gallery, where they

worked with Danish live role-playing g a m e developer Bjarke Pedersen

imitated the looping gestures given to bodies in video g a m e s after

to create a scenario for European LARPers to play out in the park during

characters have died.

Condon recently sat down to discuss SonsbeekLive and an upcoming project: Case, a live stage

adaptation

of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

HALTER: Why were you drawn to working with LARPers for Sonsbeek?

CONDON: There's a progressive Nordic European LARPing scene that has been around for years in Scandinavia. In 1999, these groups in Copenhagen and Sweden created the LARP Manifesto, based on Lars Von Trier's Dogme 95 manifesto, saying, we don't want simulation. That means if you hit somebody you really hit them; if you have sex with someone, you really have sex with them. So it's like—let's rent a house, put 30 people in there, and pretend we're a 1970s commune. They found a dry-docked Russian submarine from the 1960s, so they got authentic Russian navy uniforms, lived on the sub for three days, wired it with some electronics and had some kind of drama play out naturally. I spent a few years getting in touch with the LARP community, trying to find a way to work with them that wasn't just taking the visual style and making a video or something like that.

What kind of scenario did you provide for the players?

We built a 40-foot high tower that they lived in for three days at a time. We provided a very basic live game mechanics structure. They built their own backgrounds for their own characters; they lived in character for three days. The point was to create this outer structure based on the Nordic style that spit out random performances and rituals around the objects. It was the perfect situation for me not to just recontextualize the LARPers in an art exhibition, but to do a double recontextualization, to take over all the other artists' works.

How did the players interact with regular park attendees?

That was the difficult thing for me—how to make these two separate spaces, two mind-sets interface seamlessly without breaking each other, because there's an inherent performance structure that an art viewer at a public exhibition follows.

What we realized was that we could manipulate that, because it has a set of rules. So we told the players that the whole park was an alternative plane of existence, and the art viewers were ghosts in a kind of purgatory.

The most dynamic thing that would h a p p e n is that art viewers would come to the tower, because it's the core thing that you could see, so players would switch off guarding it. I left these mirrors around, not knowing what they would do with them. The players kept breaking them, then picking u p the pieces and pointing them at viewers w h o were constantly trying to get in. They had no idea what was going on because I didn't want the viewers to understand anything about the back-story.

We had an incredibly interactive piece on both sides, and at no point did we have to tell the viewers that they were playing a game. What I like about it so m u c h is that there is no "true viewer" and each group gets a different experience. It's like I made three different pieces—I m a d e a piece for the players, I made a piece for the audience, and I made a piece for people to see later, to talk about like we're talking about it. The trick is making all these pieces somehow function simultaneously together.

ABOVE LEFT: Brady Condon. BELOW LEFT and ABOVE: Documentation from Condon's event, Sonsheektm: The IwntylmtM Mmiesimn. in Amhem, The Netherlands, 2008.

Now you're readying Case, which you're staging in a red-barn theater in a Missouri town.

A lot of the actors are from the c o m m u n i t y theater in the area or recovering addicts. The book itself is about addiction and transcendence. The play itself will be six hours—viewers can come in and leave w h e n they want—more like a reading with sculptural props, a live electronic musician, and a gamelan orchestra that kicks in later during the hallucination scenes, when he's in cyberspace. The design's somewhere between early 1990s computer-generated imagery like Lawnmower Man and Bauhaus. It's interactive in the sense that things will be h a p p e n i n g in different spaces. People w a n d e r around, choose the space they want to look at.

I really consider these things temporary little c o m m u n e s : Everybody that comes has some kind of involvement. It's different than a public sculpture-—it gives people an attachment to something they're coming to see. It's beyond game design— it's just trying to figure out what people will do in certain situations.

ED HALTER is a critic and curator living in Brooklyn, New York.

His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer. The Village Voice, and elsewhere, and he is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art.

'Vis a participant you enter Palazzo Zenobio to find a phone. Press dial and a man on a video link answers. He asks you to put on a pair of sunglasses. He guides you out of the gallery and into the city. He asks you to choose between Eamon, a Customs Agent from Northern Ireland with four children, and Ulrike, a journalist and single mother based in Berlin. As you walk you receive a number of phone calls. It becomes clear that now you are the person you have chosen. It is you who has lived under cover, who has spied, who has robbed and killed. You have made the ultimate decision to risk your life to change the world."

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Thus begins your experience of Ulrike and Eamon Compliant, a project by Blast Theory at the De La Warr Pavilion for the 2009 Venice Biennale. Ulrike and Eamon Compliant belongs to an emerging genre of work, known as "pervasive gaming," that uses the city as game space. The genre has theatrical roots, particularly in street theater, improv, performance art, and literature. The current near ubiquity of GPS-enabled mobile phones has enabled a new form of outdoor games by inserting player position in physical and virtual space into the hybrid playground of mixed reality. Unlike traditional games that unfold in urban space—such as marathons or the college craze for zombie tag—pervasive gaming is a heady remix of club and fan cultures, online gaming, social networking, and mobile technology.

In the past century, the daring high-wire and skyscraping feats of Philippe Petit, "human spider" Alain Robert, and the urban parkour/free-running movements transformed city towers, walls, and obstacles into props and game pieces, inviting a recontextualization of urban space. Pervasive gaming simiABOVE and TOP: A participant in Blast Theory's Ulrike anil [man Compliant receives phoned larly transmutes the familiar, but with the added dimension of instructions at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and proceeds into the city to play the game. networked play that heightens players' perspectives beyond the built landscape to form new urban social and cultural constructions. "distributed narrative"—imagine that every object or message Pervasive games include alternate reality games (ARGs), delivery system in the local and global environment is live-action role-playing games (LARPs), locative media, and potentially a piece of the puzzle or story. To make sense of humble street games. They range in complexity from no- or such a widely dispersed narrative, one must marshal the "hive low-tech to intricate virtual environment systems known as mind" to put the pieces together again. Signature ARGs such mixed and augmented reality. They make their appearance as The Beast and I Love Bees (the former promoting the film boldly as art and theatre in biennales and festivals—or fur- A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and the latter promoting the tively, as clues teased from fan media that lead down an entry computer game Halo 2) planted clues in jars of honey, movie point known as a "rabbit hole." No matter how sophisticated, trailers, and messages delivered from payphones scattered these events draw from familiar play motifs: tag, races of all around the globe. Other ARGs launch a narrative premise to kinds, stunts, treasure and scavenger hunts, puzzles, charades, provoke a "mass collective imagining" as in World Without Oil and the huge menu of trust and comedy exercises from impro- where players uploaded online journals of their actions and visational theater. thoughts inspired by the as-if conditions of peak oil. ARGs ARGs are generally characterized by their use of the introduced the concept of TINAG, or "This is not a game," to environment to tell a story through multiple sources ranging refer to the deliberate conflation of a player's so-called real life from movie posters to the use of phones, fax, email, Internet as differentiated from the voluntary and conscious participation sites, GPS, and mobile technology. This type of ARG is a within the boundaries described by a game's "magic circle."

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LARPing grew out of the tabletop Dungeons and Dragons games of the 1970s into large role-playing reenactments of fantasy fiction. LARPers immerse themselves in character and setting for extended periods of time, improvising narrative according to rule-based direction. Influenced by Dogme 95, there is a Scandinavian LARP Manifesto, which applies theory and aesthetics to a growing practice most recently employed by Brody Condon in the 2008 Sonsbeek Festival (see page 36).

Informed by the outdoor adventure movement, one of the key city games of the new century debuted in a dream in 2000. San Francisco-based Ian Fraser, a former Outward Bound leader, reports that he experienced a "vivid dream" that he was navigating the city in a magic helmet, He shared his dream with Finnegan Kelly and together they created The Go Game and marketed it as a team-building experience. They transformed Fraser's magic helmet into a "Super Hero Lunch Box," containing a cell phone, digital camera, and map. The game, loosely modeled after a scavenger hunt with elements of improv and puzzles, sends teams on missions to scour their neighborhood for clues, solve puzzles, and interact with actors planted strategically through the area to pose riddles and judge tasks received, via cell phone, from Game Headquarters. The highly competitive missions are timed and judged, seeding new relationships with uninhibited street performance—teamplay, not teamwork.

New York City's Come Out & Play Festival (held additionally in Amsterdam) and San Francisco's SFZero emphasize social networking. Come Out & Play, founded by Catherine Herdlick in 2006, is a boisterous, all-out, all-hours,

As part of The So Srnefs 2009 Bollywood-themed game in San Francisco, two teams start the "Dance Off' mission, and 100 players perform the final scene of their Bollywood movie.

40

romp-in-the-streets festival promising "to bring together a public eager to rediscover the world around them through play." This June's festival scattered 34 games throughout Times Square, Pier 84, Central Park, and Brooklyn, awarding not only the game players but also the game designers in categories from "Best Use of Technology" and "Best Narrative" to "Best Use of Space."

Billed as a "Collaborative Production Game," SFZero, launched by Ian Kizu-Blair and Sam Lavigne in 2006, enjoins players to create characters, complete and invent tasks, and keep score while "meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities." The collaborators' website displays a continuous stream of new tasks as well as documentation of completed tasks. As an example, for "75+405 points" you might be instructed to "totally replace a public sign (the bigger the better) with a modified version."

The result, attached to your social profile, draws comment, starting conversation. SFZero is pervasive in that it is continuous: Players incorporate their characters and missions into ongoing social relationships.

Commissioned by the University of Minnesota Design Institute in 2003, Big Urban Game, known as B.U.G., is the

A team playing Day in the Park during the 2009 Come Out and Play Festival in Central Park, New York City. The teams work to solve huge tangrams to create their ideal day in the park.

most literal model of city-as-board-game. Designers Frank Lantz, Katie Salen, and Nick Fortugno, when challenged to create an experience that would "change people's perspective of urban space," created 25-foot tall inflatable pieces and designed an old-fashioned, if unwieldy, five-day race through a route determined by community votes to a toll-free phone line. Lantz, of Area/Code, a company that makes cross-media games and entertainment, writes: "By drastically refraining the familiar territory of the players' urban environment, the game forced them to see that environment with fresh eyes."

The experience even inspired the writing of a "Big Games Manifesto."

Area/Code followed B. U.G. with Pac-Manhattan, produced by students in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University in 2004, bringing the beloved console game Pac-Man to life in the streets of Manhattan. As in the computer version, Pac-Manhattan navigates a maze, his

LEFT TO RIGHT: B.U.S. players in downtown Minneapolis, MN, 2003; Blast Theory, Hay nlthe Fi}urines, 2006, Berlin; We Like Ifonr Bike sign, posted by a Sflero game player in Chicago, IL in 2006 (and still in place in 2009).

progress measured by his consumption of the little white dots lining the route as threatening ghosts give chase. In this version, however, the Pac-Man and ghost characters are human, wearing large bright costumes, while the dots are virtual and visible only to the player controllers tracking the runners via Wi-Fi. The Pac-Manhattan website posts the rules, encouraging worldwide localization of the game.

Blast Theory artists Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr, and Nick Tandavanitj cite theater and club culture among their early influences and design deliberately to blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual landscapes. As in Pac-Manhattan, their 2001 work Can You See Me Now overlays the real street with a virtual map but with virtual runners chased by (physical) street runners using Wi-Fi and mobile devices. As Adams describes: It's a c h a s e p l a y e d s i m u l t a n e o u s l y o n l i n e (by t h e p u b lic) a n d in t h e streets (by a s s i g n e d p a r t i c i p a n t s ) . Y o u ' r e d r o p p e d i n t o a v i r t u a l city, y o u u s e a v a t a r s to n a v i g a t e , a n d t h e r e ' s a c h a t i n t e r f a c e so that r e a l - w o r l d a n d o n l i n e p a r t i c i p a n t s c a n text o n e a n o t h e r . You're c h a s e d in t h e real city a n d t h e v i r t u a l city, at t h e s a m e t i m e . T h r e e r u n -

In 2004, Area/Code created Pac-Minhstan, a game where human players use the internet to navigate the streets of Manhattan and gobble virtual dots. See www.pacmanhattan.com.

n e r s on t h e street are e q u i p p e d w i t h PDAs, GPS d e v i c e s , and walkie-talkies.

Playing on a computer screen, your avatar is chased by physical runners on the city streets. Virtual players, ostensibly safe at home, possibly thousands of miles away in Tokyo or Seattle, are not safe from their physical pursuers on the street of London. Tagging involves taking and uploading a photo of the physical location corresponding to the virtual—confronting the player with evidence of her inhabited vet unembodied location. Blast Theory adds pathos to the chase by theatrically exploiting a bit of personal history gleaned during game registration: Your earlier answer to, "Is there someone you haven't seen for a long time that you still think of?" is broadcast as you are tagged; the name of your missing person is called out in that space where your avatar was caught, longing for a distant connection.

Uncle Hoy All Around You, which premiered in 2003 and won that year's Golden Nica at the Ars Electronica Festival, continued Blast Theory's blurring of the physical and virtual city. Players, stripped of their possessions, are sent on an hourlong mission to find LIncle Roy. Online players, inhabiting a virtual version of the same city, are also looking for Uncle Roy. Messages fly and are recorded, social interactions ensue.

Day of the Figurines, billed as an "MMG for SMS" (massively multiplayer game using the SMS messaging protocol), premiered in Berlin 2006. In this game. Blast Theory returned the city-as-game-board to its rightful scale as a miniature in a museum gallery. Players adopt a physical figurine, endow it with a name and identity, and immerse themselves for 24 days in the life of a fictional town. Players interact with the game, their positions updated on the physical game board via SMS messages sent to their phone at intervals during the day.

Spectators participate in the game by following as the figurines are moved, tracking players' physical movements, on the miniature game board, an elaborate augmented reality system developed at Nottingham University's Mixed Reality Lab. Reminiscent of the MUD (multi-user dungeon) and MOO (MUD, object oriented) games of the 1980s, it was designed as an interstitial experience, a game to be played in short bursts between other activities. It is pervasive in the sense that players' adopted characters occupy the in-between spaces in their lives in an episodic narrative with other members of the game community.

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Brody Condon, an artist steeped in the iconography of computer games, inserted a LARP production within the 2008 Sonsbeek International Festival the Netherlands. Twenty-six sculptures arrayed in a 160-acre park provided the setting for 30 LARPers to inhabit both a 40-foot tower (Condon's sculptural contribution) and an alternate narrative describing a futuristic landscape of structures (the artworks) calling for ritual celebration. The performers improvised their devotions amidst the artwork, creating a parallel existence with the viewing public whom they'd been instructed to consider as "ghosts." Setting the LARP within the larger spectacle, Condon has brought the game full circle back to its theatrical roots: the players wholly involved in their own play for benefit of the festival spectators. The lack of intersection between these wholly contained worlds added a dimension to both. [See interview on page 36.]

The fun and the aesthetics of pervasive gaming shouldn't obscure the role of big business. The "hive mind" required to solve ARGs positions them as viral marketing vehicles for the entertainment industry. Matt Adams' statements that Day of the Figurines is about "making an artwork that sits in your own pocket on your own personal device," and that "it is something that is very much about how an artwork could insinuate yourself into your daily life," take on another sense when one considers that Blast Theory's work is funded by the Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming (IPerG), which includes Nokia Research and Sony Europe. Is it the artwork or the telecom industry being insinuated into our pockets and our daily lives?

Yet celebration of the city and fresh perspective might be reason join the urban hunt: In 2003, following the rules proscribed by the Angel Project, Deborah Warner's theatrical urban treasure hunt through Manhattan, I read the advertisement directly in front of me in the packed subway car.

It posed the question, "Where are YOU Going?''

Unsure. I glanced at the book held by the adjacent passenger. The title was Neverwhere. Random events both—neither question nor answer had been placed by Ms. Warner, yet. contextualized by her direction, they as well as I fell into place: The city revealed its poetry.

PEGGY WEIL, based in northern California, is a digital media artist and designer focusing on interactive media, serious games, and immersive design.

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m

Agoras and Conversations: Virtual Worlds, Public Art & Second Life

Of

the Internet's many functions, one of the most interesting is its role as an agora for n e w forms of electronic art, especially t h o s e that fit under the general classification of " W e b 2.0" and sites w i t h

user-created content. These include social media, blogs, and virtual w o r l d s - s i m u l a t e d 3 D public s p a c e s w h e r e t e n s of t h o u s a n d s of p e o p l e explore, build, c o n g r e g a t e , and create art. These online art forms include w o r k s that s h a p e community, form g a t e w a y s b e t w e e n physical and virtual spaces, ones that r e s p o n d to and retain traces of the visitor, a n d allow the e m e r g e n c e of surprising sites of commentary. For our purposes, w e 42

will explore w o r k s that create a virtual sense of agora or stimulate conversation about the potential of virtual s p a c e as public space.

Virtual worlds are online "places," a cross between a 3D video game and a spatial version of the Web, populated by digital bodies called avatars, which can walk, fly, and take the form of anything from human beings to mythical beasts. There are two main kinds of virtual worlds: games like World of Warcraft and Eve Online where people can act, but not build; and open-ended environments like Second Life (SL) and OpenSims, which are spaces created almost entirely by the residents. User-created content can make for wide variations in work, but what is exciting is that there are disparate groups of artists making their own spaces and creating novel solutions. The most popular of these virtual worlds is SL, with around 70,000 people online at any moment, and many of the principles that apply in SL also apply to of any number of virtual platforms.

When considering SL, the question is what constitutes a public art space? Users can limit access to areas, but this is not common. Also, SL is hosted by a private corporation, Linden Labs, which has sweeping, optionally enforceable, and mandatory terms of service. Is this any different than the Chagall Mural in Chicago being located on the Chase Building grounds, or the privately sponsored Millennium Park? Within SL, there are many different kinds of spaces, from accurate, three-dimensional reproductions of realworld galleries to malleable spaces that utilize the formal qualities of virtual plasticity. A variety of types of public art spaces in SL serve as centers for congregation, community, and conversation. Some have similar functions as public art in the physical world; others bridge physical and virtual space or foreground unexpected interactions in agoras around SL, while other sites present "remediated" (reproduced) historical public artworks.

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Attracting Attention: Flower Tower Virtual worlds are social media, and public art in SL can act as a focal point for community. A work by Eshi Otawara (Irena Mandic) called Flower Tower (above), for example, consists of a giant column, reminiscent of Brancusi's Endless Column. It depicts psychedelic lotus flowers, which create compartments and areas for avatars to fly through, congregate in, and dance around (dancing is very popular in SL). What is striking is the resemblance of avatars to bees around the tower. Avatars move from flower to flower and fly around its central alcoves. The Flower Tower acts as an "attention flower" for its avatar bees.

This work is a prime example of how virtual public art becomes a focal point that attracts, guides, and directs the flow of the virtual public, just as Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate functions in Millennium Park.

Spaces of Conversation Some spaces in SL are created for dialogue between the emerging virtual art world and the traditional material art world.

Brooklyn is Watching (BiW) is a public SL exhibition space and also a window to Williamsburg's Jack the Pelican Presents gallery. Every week, artist Jay Van Buren hosts a podcast featuring critics, artists, and scholars, both in the gallery and on SL, who critique works placed or built in the BiW space that week. The discussion can range from intellectual disputation to a boozy art brawl. BiW creates a public space for mixed-reality dialogue between physical and virtual gallery settings.

Additionally, the fact that anyone can place works in the BiW space allows people to build on one another's works or augment works with their own. In June 2009, for example, "Werner Kurosawa" placed a mammoth spherical body of white intersecting rings, which resembled a set of ley lines around a globe, rotating in place. Another SL player, "Comet Morigi," subsequently placed a halo of objects, which dropped streams of luminous pearls that blew in the wind within Kurosawa's space, reminding me of Art+Com's robotic ball sculpture at the BMW Museum. Both works were technically adept, as Kurosawa's used a trick to allow the rings to be far larger than the boundaries of the square parcel of land on which BiW is located, and Morigi's was an iteration of a simple object creator that subtly showed the pattern of the simulated wind. Together they created a wonderful conversation, which deftly addressed formal issues of SL.

Mixed Realities: The Gate Works in SL also create direct conversations between audiences in SL and in the physical world. In 2008, the Brussels media art center IMAL asked the SL performance art collective Second Front, of which I am a member, to create a work that would be a life-sized window between SL and the physical. Our solution was The Gate-, a cross between Rodin's bronze Gates of Hell (installed posthumously, 1937) and Galloway and Rabinowitz's Hole-in-Space (1980), which connected audiences on two coasts via satellite video uplink. The Gate was at the Odyssey Art and Performance Space in SL. A huge reproduction of the Rodin work faced a wall that was tied to a video camera in the physical gallery. In SL, the view was as if one were looking into the media center at IMAL. Conversely, the projected image in the physical gallery was at the "other side" of the wall in SL. For the performance, Second Front embedded their avatars into the doors, and later jumped out of the facade, stood before the portal and confronted the gallery audience. This created a fun dialogue between live online artists playing a digital puppet show before a sculpture in a virtual public art zone, which was then projected before the audience at IMAL who could also be seen in SL. The fact that the projection in the physical space was three meters tall was uncannier, as Second Front's avatars were life-size if they walked up to the portal.

ABOVE: Jay Van Buren's conceptual art project, Brooklyn is Witching, launched in 2008.

BELOW: Two views of The Bile, performed by Second Front in Brussels, Belgium in 2007.

Analogues: Odyssey versus Millennium Park Even though The Gate shows an interface between a physical and virtual public, there are spaces in SL that serve functions of agora similar to any physical outdoor art site, such as Chicago's Millennium Park. Odyssey Art & Performance Simulator and East of Odyssey are two adjoining quarter-kilometer square parcels that are dedicated to the development, exhibition, and archiving of large-scale art in SL. On-site, there are at least three auditoriums, the Gallery A and B exhibition areas, meeting centers where performances are staged, and meetings by various real-world new media community groups such as Dorkbot and The Upgrade. This space provides meeting spots and long-term sculptures and thus performs similar functions to Millennium Park. Among the works in Odyssey are the longstanding responsive audiovisual works by Adam Nash and Esther Drier's Baudrillard Captured sculpture (pictured top left), which resembles a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon of the French philosopher, tethered in place by bronze chains.

Traces: Adam Nash One of the more exciting elements of art in virtual worlds is how the space itself can become fluid and responsive to presence, even leaving traces of that visitation. Australian artist Adam Nash ("Adam Ramona" in SL) filled East of Odyssey with Seventeen Unsung Songs, 16 audiovisual works surrounding a huge, towering, blue structure. Each of these works is a gigantic alien musical instrument that users must figure out how to "play." For example, in what Nash calls "user-created content," the blue path going to The Space Between, which appears to be a cubic blue cobblestone road, emits sound as the avatar walks. With Disaccumulator (pictured at left), the user can move around a set of inclined plates to guide a stream of red balls dropping from the sky, creating a musical composition by arranging the plates to control the "ping" and "bong" sounds.

This ability to reconfigure the space, to "touch" the work and radically reconfigure it to realize creative dialogue, is a wonderful component of art in virtual space.

This Land is Your Land: Gazira Babeli Another site of art as a radical conversation between the audience and environment involved a form of virtual land art. Italian SL artist Gazira Babeli's This Land Is Your Land (pictured at left) in East of Odyssey playfully riffs off the classic Woody Guthrie song by creating a work that allows anyone to landscape the region for a period of time, no matter how severe. The result was a chaos of erupting peaks and valleys, with avatars plunging and rocketing skyward, as well as flat paths plowing through the undulating landscape as people carved their own way through it. This continued for about two hours until Babeli announced its end. At that point the landscape was returned to its former state. Could the landscape have been retained as a monument of the event? Perhaps, but for Babeli the purpose was about the experience of the event, rather than a monument.

For her, no archiving was possible. This is where the plasticity of the environment can lead to a truly robust experience, but it also demonstrates the ephemerality of the medium.

Unconventional Art: The Hobos Another form of conversation takes place around clashes in sensibilities with regard to the aesthetic interpretation of virtual space. One subculture in SL, for instance, is called the Hobos. They are the antithesis of SL's typical culture of the shiny technotopia, where everyone has rippling biceps, flowing gowns, or are robots or mythical beasts. The Hobos also break SL's capitalist component by creating a system of free

AM Radio, from an installment of Under the Tree T h a t D i e i , completed in 2008.

goods and habitation, going against the usual need for residents to use "Linden Dollars" to secure land and many items. While buying the currency is technically not needed to participate in Second Life, one has to search harder to find free goods or be limited to temporary spaces to make anything.

Hobos depict themselves as squatters and derelicts and have a large subculture of sharing, with much of their work exhibiting great expertise and craft. Hobo villages also reflect this counterculture, often to the consternation of their neighbors. I found Lollygagger's Lane (pictured bottom left) at Sarafina region, a meticulously formed slum, complete with trash blowing in the streets. It's a wonderfully abject zone, with gin joints, tenements, flophouses, and junk heaps. 1 spent the majority of my time there in "Bertha's Bordello," under a sign that read "Bertha will be back in a few minutes." Sitting on the soiled mattress, playing the "catch the crabs" game. I perused the walls, covered in fetish-kitsch, some from unusual sources, such as the 1940s fetish magazine Bizarre, indicating an in-depth knowledge of outre culture, suggesting the intentionality behind the site.

The Hobos are not without their critics. On a parcel adjacent to Lollygagger's Lane stands a chalet with an odd structure surrounding it: The neighbors had erected a 40meter-tall billboard around the property covered with scenes of verdant meadows and forests. Yet according to locals. Hobos have been fighting to maintain the area despite the complaints.

In so doing, new public spaces are created that evoke a wonderful conversation about what it means to, in the words of Linden Lab's tag line, "build your own world."

A M Radio One of the more enigmatic environmental artists in SL is "AM Radio" (the only name he uses), who creates entire regions that evoke an eerie yet painterly and nostalgic feeling. Most of his pieces fit into a larger framework called The Space Between These Trees, which evokes a nostalgia for the 1930s and 1940s with only a series of cinematic landscapes with minimal clues as to their connection. Individual works include Under the Tree That Died, which consists of a floating, uprooted tree, a road, a car similar to an early Buick Skylark, and a doorwayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to where? In The Far Away, there is a farmhouse, a frozen pond, and an extravagant simulation of wheat. AM Radio's work is like a cross between Edward Hopper, Rene Magritte, and David Lynch. Another aspect of his work is that he interrogates the way we use (virtual) land by offering plots of wheat and other "spatial" props in return for a donation to the charity Heifer International, and has so far raised more than $7,500. This is his sign for social responsibility in virtual worlds, harnessing the capital aspect of SL for tangible philanthropy.

From these examples alone, it is evident that there are a number of artists in these early days of mass virtual world art who are addressing formal, relational, and interactive issues in Second Life, which just begins to tap its potential. While one might think that public virtual art could devolve into a morass of technical tricks and "eye candy," these artists show an awareness of the medium's potential, art historical contexts, and analogues to the physical. However, they do so with a sensitivity and playfulness that shows their respect for the audience. Are virtual worlds the future of public art? Go see for yourself.

P A T R I C K L I C H T Y is an assistant professor in the Interactive Arts and Media department at Columbia College in Chicago.

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The days of consumerism are over. in order to increase popular acceptance. There is, incidentally, We do not want to be constantly reminded: "Buy me, need me!" no advertising on these monitors. We should also remember Please, leave us in peace. Let us live our lives and, as citizens, the extraordinary initiative of Sao Paulo's mayor, banning be surrounded by images and signs with a different story! all public advertising from the urban environment, to huge Let's begin with these programmable digital moving popular acclaim. images, these virtual spaces, this manipulative medium, which The digital out-of-home industry has acknowledged the has surreptitiously entered the urban environment. Why are need for more diverse programming, including news, public screens broadcasting incessant advertising service announcements, and entertainin the public sphere? At home, we can ment content, amid their advertisement switch off our TV set or change channels, programs. Planning authorities are attachand we can vote with our viewing patterns ing more stringent conditions for architecon what we like or dislike. This freedom tural integration and content. But only is impossible with the fagade screens with a real understanding of the medium A new and viable and contemporary urban screen furniture. will the local authorities be able to Where are the switches for this digital, influence its development in favor of the out-of-home world? We no longer want urban public public interest. to have to look the other way in order to If installation of such media in the avoid advertising. We need something public domain were contingent on the display medium more inspirational. inclusion of cultural content, these The presence of digital moving imagscreens could be an arena for social exis possible! es in our urban environments is growing. perimentationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and for art. Public space, The recent world soccer championships whether physical or virtual, is an area for and the Olympics in China have left a lot the creation and exchange of culture, for of public transmission screens dispersed all over our cities. strengthening local economies and the cultural fabric, and for New screens are being set up for the London Olympics. The providing local identity. advertising industry is predicting growth for "digital out-ofThe BBC's public space broadcasting initiative generates home" media. Urban or regional screen networks, on public content in close collaboration with local authorities, artists, transport for instance, are becoming increasingly available, and educators in each specific location. Besides "public news, and there is renewed interest in media fagades. information and education points," the program's purpose is There is also, however, growing public intolerance of the to provide a high-profile outlet for visual arts, digital innovalight emitted from large monitors, especially when their content tion, and local filmmaking. Thus, Yoko Ono's return to Liverlacks popular local appeal. With experience, the nationwide pool's Bluecoat in April 2008 was shown live on the BBC Big BBC "public space broadcasting" 1 initiative aiming at the Screen in Liverpool 2 , while in Bath, a collaborative research installation of large monitors in central urban locations across project, Cityware, uses the screens to interactively involve the the UK has shifted to include more specifically local content local population in the creation of community art and games.

Switch off!

A

A P l e a for the MIRIAM STRUPPEK

Media Arts

tion Square with its FedTV.3 With an agenda of communitybuilding and sustainability, it is a good example of how screen projects may build sustainable relationships among culturally diverse citizens of a vibrant, modern city.

Federation Square's main plaza centers around a prominent 200-square-meter public LED screen, a rare case of early consideration of the marriage of new media and urban design. The screen is primarily for the use of local groups for their festive activities. Thus, the 2008 Urban Screens Festival 4 developed its programming in collaboration with local video and arts festivals, and included professional development workshops for young media artists. To mitigate light pollution, a special Dark Nights program features video works in darker colors with less hectic changes in lighting.

Moreover, the program must work without soundâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;since noise ordinances strictly prohibit sound, permanent urban screen art must function as a purely visual language. One method of transcending this "sound barrier" is demonstrated at the Contemporary Art Screen in the redevelopmet area of Zuidas, Amsterdam (CASZ).5 Positioned next to a train station entrance, CASZ presents three-minute silent shorts to passersby. If your interest is stimulated, you can use your mobile phone as a loudspeaker by calling a particular number.

The MIA6 temporary media fagade covering building works at Milan's landmark Cathedral (Duomo) Square consists of a digital section for arts and noncommercial public service announcements, framed by large conventional advertising LEFT: A crowd gathers for FedTV, in Melbourne, Australia's Federation Square, 2008. scaffoldings. The first MIA series attempted to counter its ABOVE: The BBC Big Screen in Plymouth city center's Piazza, featuring a presentation of commercial surroundings with a participatory approach: Mima Mia in 2009. There are 20 screens throughout Great Britain, with more on the way.

Passersby could contribute their portraits straight onto the screen through a national competition. Whether something so simplistic can seriously challenge commercial advertising Nevertheless, a number of issues present a potential for remains questionable. conflict among the public broadcaster and local political or arts For their one-month Tarantula project, the Milaninstitutions and cannot be underestimated: Should displays of based Fondazione Nicola Trussardi presented works by 15 violence, nudity, discrimination, or drugs be restricted? How established artists during twice-daily hour-long screenings. do you present art to a public that is not specifically prepared Most impressive was Pippilotti Rist's series of 16 one-minute to visit an art event? How relevant are official "content video segments, Open My Glade, originally commissioned in guidelines"? Moreover, the involvement of local residents 2000 by the Public Art Fund in New York City, where it aired may yield unexpected fears and resentmentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not to mention in Times Square. It represented one of the most successful the liberties advertisers take to shock and seduce consumers. treatments in a commercial format, using the screen's windowUltimately, artists might have to be ready to work in contexts like character to afford fascinating views into an altogether ranging from popular entertainment to communally watching a sports event. On the other hand, with skillful programming, different commercial media universe.

A different approach is represented by the Streaming media art also presents a totally fresh opportunity to reach Museum project, which attempts to link urban screens to completely new audiences. present joint, linked exhibitions "on cyberspace and public The most exciting merger of a TV-format screen and a public urban space has been achieved in Melbourne's Federa- space on seven continents." Billed as a "hybrid museum for the

47

twenty-first century," the Streaming Museum commissioned artists to create works that were then displayed on public ABOVE: Georg Klein, Sonic Parole, 2008, Mediafacades Festival, Berlin. screens across the world, as well as on the Internet and BELOW: Screen for the 11th annual Freewaves HollyWould Festival, Los Angeles, CA, 2009. handheld electronic devices.

In the fall of 2008, the Berlin Media Fagade Festival 7 presented a number of works in the public domain. Twentyfour Berlin-based artists participated, producing site-specific fagade works for SAP, a software firm; Berlin's O2 World arena; an historic gas storage facility, or Gasometer; the cultural center Collegium Hungaricum Berlin; and a public information terminal operated by the street furniture producer Wall. The artistic challenge consisted in working with new resolutions, different pixel spacings, and new sizes and viewing distances.

During the development of projects it also became apparent that the built fagades serving as screens would always reveal something about their corporate operators, which defines their relationship with the general urban environment and the particular locale. Hence the Gasometer and O2 screenings were perceived as iconic markers of the redevelopment of Berlin and the impending gentrification of the affected areas.

The festival culminated in a heated debate on the furious veejay performance projected on the fagade, during the Berlin opposition by local residents to nighttime light emissions.

Film Festival in Spring 2009.

The artworks for the Gasometer reflected on the role of the The Freewaves HollyWould Festival 3 filled TV sets and media fagade as a communications medium with participatory monitors in 30 selected stores along Hollywood Boulevard potential. The Stimmungs Gasometer created by Benjamin with new media art. Additionally, new art videos were shown Maus, Julius von Bismarck, and Richard Wilhelmer transformed in and on 2,200 TV sets in transit buses throughout Los Angethe structure into an indicator that reflected residents' moods. les, while artist-activists simultaneously staged guerrilla-style In his work Sonic Paroleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Think different, Be yourself, Join actions that questioned the appropriation of media for surveilthe revolution! for the O2 entertainment arena fagade, artist lance. "Helping communities see their own image without Georg Klein created an ironic commentary on radical social a corporate lens has been a major motivation for Freewaves and political slogans of the 1960s and 1970s that are now often ever since the beginning," explains the organization's director, transformed into messages of radical chic in contemporary Anne Bray. The videos ranged in content and location, includadvertising. ing a gender program that looped in the store window of an erotic supply store and a documentary about people who travArchitecturally well-incorporated and purpose-built eled to New Orleans to help residents after Hurricane Katrina. screens can provide interesting aesthetic experiences with space and structure. During daytime the LED lights incorpoSome architectural projects have proven to be suitable rated into the curvilinear window frames of the arena disap- for longer-term presentations of media artworks. An imporpear completely, while providing interesting perspectives into tant condition is the successful aesthetic amalgamation of the interior and exterior space at night when the building is lit screen itself with the architectural building shell. The more inside. Depending on the intensity of the latter, the interior the light-pixel installation becomes an artwork, the less its apeither outshines the advertising message or is eclipsed by it. preciation depends on constantly changing content and proThe newly built Hungarian cultural institute Collegium motionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a fact demonstrated in the now legendary Bix media Hungaricum Berlin" uses its media fagade for self-promotion, fagade, 10 which covers a part of the Kunsthaus Graz building as an artistic medium, and to generate funds for its operations. with an organic form of light rings. For a large cultural institution like the Kunsthaus this concept serves well as additional The festival offered an opportunity to try out the newly fitted unique exhibition space for special artistic productions, comrear projection equipment and raise the public profile of the municating creatively with the public. The Ars Electronica location and the facilities. Consequently, Peter Greenaway was Center" has recently followed this example. later happy to show his Tulse Luper Suitcases project as a live

High-quality site-specific content, however, can transform an ordinary fagade. The Dexia Tower in Brussels is an exemplary instance of a corporate effort to create a strong profile for a high-rise through the application of art and events. The special light game Touch by Labjau] used a huge touch-screen installation in front of the tower as interface for interactive engagement with the public. Another corporate project, SPOTS,12 at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, consisted of a series of curated media artworks displayed monthly on 1,800 conventional fluorescent light rings, installed temporarily behind the glass fagade. The project showed the challenge for site-specific content if the building itself is not a clear landmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially, in this instance, in the visual clutter of the redesigned Potsdamer Platz. To draw attention to the installation, filmmaker Terry Gilliam created two humorous screen sculptures that triggered the passing public into action. These fairground-like figures in front of the building provided a wry commentary on the overstaged surroundings of this tourist location.

Experience so far has demonstrated that only sustained and determined joint efforts by artists, architects, cultural operators, and a concerned and well-informed public will create the necessary conditions to appropriate urban screens from exclusive commercial use.

As a forum for user-generated content, urban screens may help to redefine our notions of urban communities, mobilizing citizens to take part in actively shaping the public space and its urban interactions. Media artists can play an important role in this appropriation by experimenting with urban screens to increase their potential for building community, sharing experiences, and ultimately, facilitating exchange within our diverse urban societies.

LEFT: Terry Gilliam's Monitor People, temporarily exhibited in 2003 on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, included video monitors inside each sculpture. RIGHT: SPOTS media fagade, 2006.

MIRJAM STRUPPEK is an urban media researcher, focusing on the livability of public space and its transformation through new media. With Susa Pop of Public Art Lab, she developed the Media Fagades Festival: www.mediaarchitecture.org.

â&#x20AC;˘ PublicEarth www.publicearth.com

Sculptures

LOVE Robert Indiana Indianapolis. IN 46208 Sculptures

Cloud Gate Anish Kapoor Chicago, IL 60602

Murals

Common Threads Meg Saligman Philadelphia, PA 19102

Get your art on the map.

NOTES 1

BBC Big Screens Public Space Broadcasting Initiative, www.bbc.co.uk/bigscreens.

2

BBC Big Screen Liverpool, www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/big_screen.

3

Federation Square. Melbourne, FedTV, www.federationsquare.com.au.

4

Urban Screens. Melbourne. 2008, www.urbanscreens08.net.

5

CASZuidas, Amsterdam, www.caszuidas.nl.

6

Media fagade MIA (Milano In Alto), www.urbansc.reen.net/eng.

7

Media Facades Festival Berlin 2008, www.mediafacadesfestival.com.

8

Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (CHB), w w w . h u n g a r i c u m . d e .

9

Freewaves HollyWould Festival, www.freewaves.org.

10

K u n s t h a u s Graz with BIX media fagade, w w w . m u s e u m - j o a n n e u m . a t / e n / k u n s t h a u s /

11

T h e n e w Ars Electronica Center, www.aec.at/center_building_en.php.

12

SPOTS light a n d media fagade, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, www.spots-berlin.de/en.

bix-media-facade.

Contribute, Learn, Take it with you.

Add your art to our Wiki of places. Millions of people will be able to discover and learn more about public art projects, locally and globally. And, with our iPhone app, you can discover new art wherever you are.

In partnership with Forecast Public Art Organizations, contact partners@publicearth.com to get your public art in PublicEarth.

STOP THE

KILLING

YouTuHefi' twifctfc

a new platform for public art

LINCOLN SCHATZ Learn more www.lincolnschatz.com www.ceasefirechicago.org

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Mission: Mobilize art, technology, youth media and ocial utilities for positive change and immediate action to end he violence epidemic.

In collaboration with CeaseFire, a violence prevention program in Chicago, my generative video portrait of the violence epidemic merges art and action onto the same platform. Engaging viewers socially and artistically, it establishes participation itself as a new form of public art.

At the project's core are over 200 individual stories filmed in Chicago's neighborhoods hardest hit by gun violence.

The generative portrait process amplifies each individual's message by combining their stories into one continually evolving, multi-layered portrait, dissolving the borders between people, ideologies and communities.

Working with youth media groups as citizen journalists and activists, we are inviting the global network to contribute text and media responses to the violence in their own cities, comment and connect with one another, and explore ways to take action through micro-donations, volunteering locally and contacting public officials. The portrait and responses will be accessible via web, mobile device, broadcast, public projection and exhibitions.

This project engages the most heavily affected communities as much as it challenges outsiders to advocate for and participate in social change. Joining audiences that rarely share the same space or communication channels, online or off, collaborators explore not just the underlying problems, but potential solutions.

A LOVE LETTER FOR YOU A Letter For One, With Meaning For All

A public art project by Steve Powers with the City of Philadelphia Mural Art Program.

Read it across 50 rooftops and walls between 45th and 63rd Streets along Market Street, best viewed from the Market-Frankford El. i

Funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative.

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FEATURED STATE While

a demographic

analysis found Illinois to be the "most average

a universal stand-in for all of Middle America

state" in the nation, and while the city of Peoria has long

("Will it play in Peoria?"),

Illinois is anything

The land that now comprises Illinois was once home to the Mississipian which between in population

settlement

but

ordinary.

at Cahokia

1300 and 1400 A D w a s the largest city in the future United States, with a population

of 40,000

in the nation. The state is also a political powerhouse—the

Ulysses S. Grant; and even the state's shady political underbelly

(think Rod Blagojevich)

Illinois' public art scene is much the same as its politics—a sculptures that pay homage

Collinsville),

(it wasn't

surpassed

to the state's ancient Native American

mix of dignified

pieces (full-size

tribes) and irreverent

spitting down on passersby). No matter where you encounter town boulevards

of Charleston-Mattoon—you

Perhaps, most of all, you will feel the pull of Illinois' indigenous,

inspired, and

industrial,

bronze

statues of Lincoln fiberglass

photos of everyday

in Chicago's

and

colorful.

ones (the ubiquitous painted

public art in Illinois—whether

are sure to be enlightened,

one of

land of Lincoln, Obama,

is nothing if not

that lined Chicago streets in the late nineties, or Jaume Plensa's C r o w n F o u n t a i n with its enlarged

the future—two

(near present-day

until 1790 by New York City). When Illinois resident John Deere invented the steel plow in 1837, Illinois became

the first and biggest industrial powerhouses

been

and cows

Chicagoans

bustling streets or the small-

entertained.

and political past, or its fanciful forward

look at

o f the themes we explore here in a close-up look at Illinois public art.

m

m

ftiiii

This r o o f t o p v i e w o f C h i c a g o ' s 2 4 . 5 a c r e M i l l e n n i u m Park, s h o r t l y a f t e r it o p e n e d in 2 0 0 4 , illustrates its m a g n i t u d e a n d its p r i m e l o c a t i o n a d j a c e n t to t h e A r t I n s t i t u t e o f C h i c a g o , M i c h i g a n A v e n u e , a n d Lake M i c h i g a n . In t h e f o r e g r o u n d is J a u m e Plensa's i n t e r a c t i v e Crown Fountain,

n o t f a r f r o m A n i s h K a p o o r ' s Cloud Gate ( o f t e n r e f e r r e d to as " T h e B e a n " ) ,

a n d in t h e b a c k g r o u n d , Frank G h e r y ' s Jay Pritzker P a v i l l i o n , o n e of t h e m o s t s o p h i s t i c a t e d o u t d o o r c o n c e r t v e n u e s in t h e c o u n t r y .

P h o t o by Chris M c G u i r e , c o u r t e s y City of C h i c a g o .

FEATURED STATE

Spotlight on Second City Chicago's M i l l e n n i u m M o m e n t JEFF HUEBNER

It has been 10 years since the cows visited Chicago, and in some ways, they never really left. The 1999 Cows on Parade exhibit—a Department of Cultural Affairs project in which some 320 artist-painted fiberglass bovines enlivened the downtown area—transformed not only the cityscape for five months, but also the way in which many residents and visitors have come to view (and want) art in the city: as fun and familyfriendly and "interactive," as a show-stopping spectacle and cultural destination.

Indeed, Cows on Parade—which spawned dozens of imitators in cities throughout the country and world—drew 10 million people, including 2 million who came just to see the cattle, and boosted the local economy by about $200 million, according to city officials. They paid attention. But whether the cows, or similar events, qualify as public art is another matter.

Critic John Beer thinks not. Such spectacles are "expressive of no social aspiration beyond the maximization of the tourist trade and aesthetically worthy of comment only insofar as they demonstrate the erasure of the line between art and entertainment, they count as neither public discourse nor art," he writes in a thoughtful essay on what he called the "disappearance" of a seriously imaginative and provocative civic art in Chicago.

Of course, there is a place for de-sanctified, de-mystified art. And local and national artists in Chicago continue to produce works that ennoble and provoke, edify and beautify—"respecting," in the words of critic Lucy Lippard, "community and environment." Yet it is largely a public art that caters to a suburbanizing, post-industrializing city where the public sphere is disappearing and where the enhancement of revenue is more important than engagement with ideas and issues.

Mostly circuses; little bread.

Exhibit A: The five-year-old Millennium Park, which makes sights like the half-mile "museum of the streets" sculptural set along nearby Dearborn Street (Calder, Chagall, Miro, Picasso, Dubuffet, et al.) seem archaic and a little bereft. The 25-acre, public/private cultural amusement park has been a phenomenally populist public space (it is an incorporated entity, with security guards). Its wide array of activities and privately funded artwork—including Anish Kapoor's shiny elliptical, mirrored, $23 million Cloud Gate ("The Bean") and Jaume Plensa's oversized face-spurting Crown Fountain (kids love it)—have drawn more than 16 million people who've spent about $2.6 billion through 2008, according to an economic impact study cited by park spokesperson Jill Hurwitz.

Exhibit B: Sculptor J. Seward Johnson's God Bless America, a 25-foot-high, Koons-kitsch-like re-creation of Grant Wood's American Gothic in a prominent Mag Mile site. (The suitcase at the base of the sculpture features ports of calls from Asian locales where jobs are being outsourced.) Johnson's Sculpture Foundation will program Pioneer Court for the foreseeable future, providing endless photo opportunities for tourists.

It shouldn't be forgotten that Untitled ("The Chicago Picasso"), the 50-foot-high Cor-Ten steel conflation of the heads

Chicago tourists during the summer of 2009, posing in front of Seward Johnson's Bod Bless America, a bronze monument to Grant Wood's painting, American Gothic, in Pioneer Court.

of a woman and a dog that was unveiled with great fanfare and bafflement in Civic (now Daley) Center Plaza in 1967, kicking off the modernist-object-in-the-urban-plaza movement, was paid for by several foundations. Then-Mayor Richard J. Daley wanted a work by the most famous artist in the world, which eventually became an unlikely civic symbol.

That same year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) instituted its Art in Public Places program, and in 1972 the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) its Art-in-Architecture Program, with Calder's Flamingo (1974) in Federal Plaza. The GSA most recently funded Chicagoan Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's La Tormenta IThe Storm) (2006), a pair of massive, 1,500-pound, titanium-clad cloud forms hanging in the central atrium of the new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Building. (The artist is a naturalized U.S. citizen.) It is a metaphor for the turmoil that comes with migration and arrival—and, perhaps unintentionally, for the post-9/11 homeland-security state, which curbs casual visitors from actually viewing the work.

The Department of Cultural Affairs' Public Art Program (PAP) oversees the city's percent-for-art program—actually, 1.33 percent of public building construction costs. Created in 1978, it is the second oldest art program for major U.S. cities, and now boasts 700-plus pieces in its collection. Last year, the program spent $220,000 (minus administration fees) on commissions for branch libraries, senior centers, police and fire

FEATURED STATE

Standouts (both 2008) include, on the North Side's Brown Line, Cooperative Image Group, Respect Signs, 2008, Chcicago. A temporary installation in response Jonathan Gitelson's Chicago El Stories, a photo-installation of 42 images depicting memories of the city that have shaped the to a tragic auto accident on the West Side. More at www.coopimage.org. lives of the Armitage station users; and, on the South Side's Red Line, Stephen Marc's 79th Street Station Montage, glass photo-collage murals featuring historical and contemporary stations, and airport terminals as well as outdoor locations like images of African-American neighborhood life, with a migraDyett Plaza, outside DuSable High School on the South Side. tion/passage theme.

That's the site of Ed Dwight's ensemble Jazz: An American Art Form (2008), four bas-relief stone plaques depicting the hisChicago is arguably the birthplace of collaborative comtory of jazz and blues along with a statue of influential music munity art practice, although that sort of terminology wasn't teacher Walter Dyett. around in 1967 when a group of African-American artists— Over two years ago, in an unprecedented action, the Chica- steeped in the Black Arts and Black Power movements—collecgo City Council passed an amended Public Art Ordinance that tively created the Wall of Respect on the South Side. This hissome observers maintained was a city takeover. Introduced by tory includes the community mural movement, which spread Mayor Richard M. Daley, the ordinance abolished the 17-mem- across the nation; the groundbreaking 1993 Sculpture Chicago ber Public Art Committee as well as project advisory panels, "new genre public art" exhibition Culture in Action, a series of each of which included citizens, and granted decision-making citywide projects designed by artists with citizens (curated by powers to PAP staffers. As before, "suitable" artists are selected Mary Jane Jacob) in response to various local neighborhood from an open slide registry (or notified of projects through pub- concerns; and the socially involved projects, exhibits, and aclic announcements) and invited to submit proposals; but now tions of collectives like the pioneering Temporary Services, local aldermen are required to convene two "public forums" Stockyard Institute, and Cooperative Image Group, who mine that include "community interests" before artwork is selected. the potential of collaborative, activist art. The latter's mylarThe change came in response to a series of lawsuits filed tape-on-cyclone-fence mural Respect Signs (2008) was done at by attorney Scott Hodes against the city since 1999 over its the West Side accident site where a driver ran a red light and administration of the PAP. While Hodes's actions spurred some killed a mother and her two sons, whose school mates helped accountability reforms, the passage of the new ordinance ren- create it. dered his latest suit moot; the Circuit Court ruled in favor of the city. "We have art that's public, but we don't have the public in art," says Hodes. However, PAP director Lee Kelley says of the public-forum method of choosing art: "The relationship with the communities where the art is going—that has been enhanced exponentially. We're definitely getting more varied input, getting a lot more voices."

Among the most successful city projects is the CTA Arts in Transit Program, a joint effort of the Chicago Transit Authority and the PAP. In 2004, with funds from the Federal Transit Administration, permanent works were installed at eight rebuilt rail stations on the 54th/Cermak branch of the Blue Line (now the Pink Line), including visually fresh tile-mosaic pieces created by Chicago street artists Juan Chavez, Hector Duarte, and Chris Silva. The $480 million renovation brought $1 million in art. Reconstruction is virtually complete on 26 more stations, on the Brown (Ravenswood) Line and Red (Howard—95th/ Dan Ryan) Line. The CTA program uses an RFQ/RFP artist selection process, and works collaboratively with station community representatives.

The newest CTA works are merely enhancing, cleverly functional, or wonderfully thoughtful, using materials such as art glass, tile and glass mosaic, photographic tile, and metal.

Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Ls Torments (The Storm), 2006, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration A few artists reference place, community, or history insightfully, with many becoming decorative afterthoughts. (Dennis Services Building, Chicago. More at www.inigomanglano-ovalle.com.

Oppenheim's public-transport piece hadn't yet been installed.)

57

FEATURED STATE

ABOVE: Millennium Park commissioned temporary pavilions in 2009 by UNStudio's Ben Van Berkel (left) and Zaha Hadid to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago.

BELOW: Tracy VanOuinen, Todd Osborne and Cynthia Weiss, Indian Land Dancing (detail, left), 2009; One of Ray Noland's "Blago" stencil works in 2009 - more at www.creativerescue.org.

^mmuV

The nonprofit Chicago Public Art Group, formed as a mural coalition in 1971, has produced hundreds of murals, mosaics, and sculptures in city neighborhoods. It has expanded the notion of community-involved public work with space design, playground parks, and bricolage. Inspired by Philadelphia's Isaiah Zagar, this mosaic technique allows for the direct application of disparate, permanent materialsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;glass, tiles, mirrors, ceramic, reliefâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on walls, along with paint and photo-screened images. They are perhaps the most epic public artworks that have been created in the past few years, each involving longterm community planning and support as well as dozens of local volunteers.

In one North Side neighborhood, four Lakeshore Drive underpass walls are now covered with glittering bricolage murals that illustrate Edgewater's past, present, and future. The most recent, Indian Land Dancing (2009), covers 3,400 square feet on both sides of the Foster Avenue viaduct. It's Chicagoland's largest artwork to pay tribute to Native American history and culture, and includes the work of many Indian artists, historians, and residents. "We were just lending our expertise," explains artist Tracy VanDuinen, who's led a half-dozen bricolage projects. "One of the advantages is that the community can get involved with it right at the very beginning. Anyone can just come by and put artwork on the wall. It gives them the opportunity to be part of a beautiful piece of art."

Chicago was the center of the political universe last year.

Ray Noland waged a largely anonymous, one-man street-art campaign for President Obama with stencils, murals, and posters leading up to the 2008 election. He has since become known as the creator of various stencils showing a track-suited Rod Blagojevich that became ubiquitous after the former governor's arrest on corruption charges. "I am solidifying a moment in time by creating imagery that resonates with people," comments Noland, who doesn't take credit for the activity. "I'm trying to engage in social and political discourse in a humorous way."

Back to the future: Millennium Park has been more artcrowded than usual, with an exhibit of contemporary sculpture from China (until October 2010), and Chicagoan Dan Peterman's Punning Table (1997), a functional 100-foot-long picnic table made from two million recycled plastic milk bottles. In addition, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Plan of Chicago by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett, two privately funded, sinuous, high-tech, space pod-like Burnham Pavilions by internationally renowned architects Zaha Hadid and UNStudio's Ben Van Berkel were on display through October 31. While designed to embody the Plan's bold visionary character, no one was quite sure if the structures were public art or architecture, leading to too much "interactivity" and public damage.

FEATURED STATE

torsos frozen in stopped movement cover a three-acre site at the south end of Grant Park, evoking ideas about democratic societies and lockstep ideologies, collectivism and individuality, conformity and difference. Agora is a counterweight to Millennium Park at the north end of Grant Park: One is a place of theatrical escape, the other of sober reflection.

However, only portions of the Burnham Plan were realized, most notably the expansion of lakefront parkland. Chuck Thurow, former longtime director of the Hyde Park Art Center, hosted meetings about what artists could do to help complete the plan—like designing islands along the shore—had Chicago been chosen as host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. "We have a perfect moment because of the incredible success of Millennium Park," he says. "That is essentially plopped art on a grand scale. But you might be able to move it to the next level, which is integrating [art] into the whole development process."

Perhaps the most meaningful public artwork in Chicago in recent memory is Agora (2006) by Magdalena Abakanowicz, a $3.5 million project of the Polish government, the Chicago Park District, and donors. Her 106 cast-iron, nine-foot-high

GARDEN

JEFF HUEBNER is a Chicago-based art journalist and who writes frequently on public art and sculpture.

Magdalena Abakanowicz's Agora features 106 cast-iron figures and was installed in 2006 at the south end of Grant Park in Chicago.

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FEATURED STATE

Touring the Land of Lincoln G r e a t e r Illinois' Public A r t J O E L GILLESPIE

As you might expect from the Land of Lincoln, a sizable percentage of the public art in downstate Illinois is centered on the sixteenth president. From the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield (opened in 2005) to "The World's Tallest Statue of Abraham Lincoln" (more than 62 feet high) outside of Ashmore, there are plenty of opportunities to observe both high and low art devoted to Honest Abe. But there's more than Lincoln in Lincolnland. Other aspects of the Civil War, as well as exhibits commissioned under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and recognition of greater Illinois' agricultural heritage, give the state's public art an historic underpinning. For example, dozens of the state's post offices feature paintings funded through the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture.

Many of these piecesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with titles such as Breaking the Prairie and Hiawatha Returning with Minnehahaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;convey images of Illinois' rustic past.

Public art in Illinois tends to vary slightly according to the region and geography of the community. Rockford and Peoria's public art tends to be more industrially-themed to match their reputations as centers of production, while college towns like Champaign-Urbana and Charleston-Mattoon have a different, more confrontational bent. Mississippi River towns like Moline and Rock Island incorporate that imagery into their public art. The nine communities below are each well-established in the area of public art in Illinois, and they each bring a slightly different flavor to the public art community.

JOEL GILLESPIE grew up in Iowa, went to college in Indiana, and lives in Illinois. If you have trouble sleeping, give him a call and ask about soybean processing.

Abraham Lincoln was the tallest U.S. president. The world's tallest Abe Lincoln statue stands at a resort in Ashmore, IL, surrounded by smaller chainsaw-carved statues illustrating various stages of his life. Photo courtesy Lincoln Springs Resort.

Bloomington-Normal Bloomington is home to one of the more recent full-size bronze statues of Abraham Lincoln, a work constructed by Illinois State University professor Keith Knoblock in 1977.

The McLean County Museum of History is also home to The Lincoln Bench (left) by sculptor Rick Harney, which allows visitors the opportunity to be photographed sitting alongside Lincoln on a park bench. Interestingly, State Farm Insurance, headquartered in Bloomington-Normal, doesn't have a noticeable presence as a patron of the local arts community.

For its 2000 Sesquicentennial Celebration, Bloomington city officials, along with a new economic development organization called Uniquely Bloomington!, decided to pump more life and vitality into the downtown region. "Keep the Bloom in Bloomington" was one of the programs they initiated, featuring 16 huge flower pots adopted by organizations to help beautify the downtown area. Then came "Corn on the Curb," in the vein of Chicago's Cows on Parade, organized by Bloomington booster Marlene Gregor. Photo by Edward Rascaille.

FEATURED STATE

Decatur Lincoln also left his mark on Decatur, but there are several other worthy pieces as well in this central Illinois community.

Just this past July, a bronze and granite sculpture dedicated to black Civil War soldiers was unveiled on Water Street Plaza in downtown. The frescoes at the U.S. Post Office, commissioned by the Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture, are considered to be among the best in the state, including Fusion of Agriculture ÂŁr Industry in Illinois by Mitchell Siporin in 1938 (above). Photos of three panels with detail by Rutherford Photo Video.

Springfield The most Lincoln-obsessed city in an Abe-centric state, Springfield has many public works devoted to the Great Emancipator, as well as several other non-Lincoln pieces.

Lincoln lived in Springfield for 24 years, which inspired many public works. There are sculptures of him by Jo Davidson.

Frederick Moynihan, Maksim Bushi. and Victor David Brenner, and others. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library alone has several sculptures of note. In the non-Lincoln division, the Willard Ice Building is home to Flight of the Rainbow Goblins (left), a stained-glass mobile by Melotte Morse Leonatti Parker, Ltd. (MMLP). Also worth mention is the Proud Raven totem pole displayed outside the Illinois State Museum, which was carved by Tongass Indians in the late 1860s. There's also a striking mural above the ticket office of the Springfield Amtrak station that includes (wait for it) a quotation from Abraham Lincoln himself. Springfield is dedicated to the memory of our sixteenth President, and any other aspects of public art should be considered a bonus. Photo courtesy MMLP.

FEATURED STATE

Peoria "Will it play in Peoria?" If the "it" is public art, then the answer is a resounding yes. Peoria, downstate Illinois' largest city, also has arguably the most varied assortment of public art of any of its non-Chicago brethren. "Peoria has a respectable history of placing public art," according to Professor Fisher Stolz of Bradley University. Artspartners of Central Illinois (www.artspartners.net) publishes In Plain Sight, a print and online guide to Peoria's public art treasures. Caterpillar, Inc., headquartered in Peoria, has been a reliable patron of the arts.

Peoria is able to incorporate modern art with WPA-era and Civil War memorial pieces. The flagship downtown piece is Sonar Tide (above), a gigantic 16-ton, 26-foot-high abstract steel sculpture by Ronald Bladen in 1983. Mary Clark Anderson produced two sculptures titled Peace and Harvest for the WPA that were located at the then-Peoria Tuberculosis Center during the Great Depression. According to In Plain Sight, they are "considered the finest pieces of outdoor WPA art left in the nation." They are now located on Becker Plaza. Fritz Triebel produced two well-regarded bronze Civil War memorial pieces (In Defense of the Flag and History Writing the Scroll of Fame) that were dedicated by President McKinley and his cabinet in 1899. Photo courtesy Peoria Civic Center.

Rock Island-Moline As Mississippi River communities, Moline and Rock Island's public art is centered around romantic images of Big Muddy and other transportation methods common to the area. In Rock Island, the Centennial Bridge Office Building mural depicting a colorful steam locomotive is a bellwether of a new focus on public displays. Sculpture in the District is a rotating sculpture program that is being discussed as a permanent installation.

There's also Blackhawk Mural by Richard Haas (1994, above) on the north side of the VanderGinst building. Rock IslandMoline is making up ground quickly on their fellow Illinois communities in the area of public art. Photo by Alan M. Carmen.

Rockford Rockford cannot literally be considered "downstate," as it lies directly west of Chicago in the north-central portion of the state, and its artistic contributions to the state's culture are decidedly urban and owe much to the city's industrial heritage. The logical place to begin is Beattie Park in downtown, the site of Cape Variations, an aluminum sculpture by John Raymond Henry erected in 1973. Described by Rockford Art Museum Registrar Jeremiah Blankenbaker as "simple, plain, maybe even a little ugly," Blankenbaker acknowledged that Cape Variations can be hard to appreciate. In Sinnissippi Gardens, an aesthetically similar piece entitled Suspended Motion by Gene Horvath consists of stainless steel columns shooting toward the sky, meant to evoke parts produced at a factory adjacent to the park's entrance. Rockford's "official sculpture" is Symbol by Alexander Liberman (1978, left), a 30-ton, 47-foot red monstrosity located near the Auburn Street Bridge. Kevin Schwitters, who has produced a website devoted to Symbol, recalls mistaking the sculpture for a water slide as a child. Photo courtesy Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.

FEATURED STATE

Charleston-Mattoon Despite their small-town stature, the Charleston-Mattoon area is making great strides in the area of public art. This past August in Mattoon, they dedicated the Mattoon Mural Arts Project. Dave Gordon, an artist from California and associated with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Project, lived in Mattoon this past summer completing Civility (above), which is funded by a Lumpkin Foundation grant. The home of Eastern Illinois University, Charleston has many permanent outdoor sculptures. Notable among them are Meridian III, a stainless steel work by Ed McCullough from 1998; Attendant Spirit, a 2008 cast bronze by Ruth Duckworth; and Elemental Tables, a unique work in dyed cast concrete with earth and plantings, created by Dann Nardi in 1993. Photo courtesy the artist.

Joliet

Champaign-Urbana

Just 35 miles south of Chicago, Joliet has shed its image as a prison town and established itself as a major mural center since 1991 by commissioning painters for a series of public murals through a community group, Friends of Community Public Art (www.fcpaonline.org). In 2001, University of Illinois Press published Jeff Huebner's The Great Walls of Joliet, a collection of color plates of the murals along with biographical information on the artists. The murals acknowledge the city's diverse ethnicities, agriculture, industry, geographical features, and famous residents such as labor leader Samuel Gompers.

According to the book description, "the Joliet murals project stands as a model for modern municipal patronage, evidence of a population's decision to invest in public art to enrich its environment and express the ideals of the whole community."

Photo of Prairie to City (2000) by K. Scarboro courtesy Friends of Community Public Art.

Befitting the home of the state's flagship university campus, many of the twin cities' best-known public works are culturally or politically provocative. That aspect is best exemplified with Edgar Heap of Birds' oft-vandalized Beyond the Chief exhibit outside the Native American House on the U of I campus. The best-known piece of public art is the Alma Mater statue (above), welcoming generations of students to the northwest corner of campus at the corner of Wright and Green Streets at the junction of Champaign and Urbana (the statue was relocated to its present location in 1962). The Alma Mater was constructed of bronze in 1929 and was designed by U of I graduate Lorado Taft. The most recent addition to the area's public art canon is the McFarland Memorial Bell Tower, a concrete structure rising straight up from the prairie, erected on the South Quad in 2008. Photo courtesy Dori (dori@merr.info).

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ON LOCATION PAU LA MAN Green Heartbeat: Public A r t Sustains Portland

Public art in Portland is coming of age, serving as both a reflection of and catalyst for the city's participatory culture and green heartbeat. Situated in Oregon's Willamette Valley between two mountain ranges and at the confluence of two rivers, Portland has long attracted the "green at heart." And the region's identity as a hub of sustainability has grown steadily based on progressive land-use planning, which has limited urban sprawl and encouraged green spaces, mass transit, and bicycling.

"Our park system and places like Pioneer Courthouse Squareâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Portland's downtown 'living room'â&#x20AC;&#x201D;represent the expectation that the city is public and connected," says Ethan Seltzer, director of Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning. Such farsighted development of Portland's public places has not only provided ground truth for the city's sustainability aspirations, it has opened the door for the expansion of public art over three decades.

Crowing Public Art Although the arts have not generally found strong financial support in Oregon, public art in Portland has received public funding steadily through city and Multnomah County percentfor-art ordinances that date from 1980. Many other government agencies, including TriMet, the region's transit agency, have followed suit.

The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) was formed in 1995 as the nonprofit successor to the Metropolitan Arts Commission, the city-county bureau that established Portland's public art program in 1980. As part of its broader mission to "integrate arts and culture in all aspects of community life," RACC has stewarded the creation and maintenance of a vibrant public art ecosystem in collaboration with partners in Christine Bourdette's Cairns series was inspired by the man-made stacks of stones that three counties. In 2008, no less than 17 project-specific public serve as landmarks for navigation. She created five stacked-slate forms that mark the path art panels, in addition to RACC's standing public art advisory to bus, train, and light rail stations along the north end of Portland's downtown transit mall. committee, contributed to planning and selecting a diverse array of public art.

While freestanding works and architecturally integrated artists plus a dozen refurbished sculptures that were created in projects continue as mainstays, temporary installations have 1977 as part of the original mall. also gained traction. "Public art can now take any form and last According to Mary Priester, TriMet's public art manager, any amount of time," says Eloise Damrosch, RACC's executive public art along the downtown Green Line is an opportunity director. For example, RACC created in situ PORTLAND, a "to create a walkable outdoor museum in our urban center feaprogram series designed "to place challenging work in public turing the best sculpture of the Northwest." Priester consulted to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about art and/or community with a local advisory committee and curators throughout the issues." For one of the early commissioned works for the region to develop the final list of sculptors, which includes program, artist Linda K. Johnson created an urban garden in an well-known and up-and-coming artists. underutilized downtown lot in 2000, titled TaxLot#lSlE40DD, A walk along the mall reveals the care with which the to explore and comment on the relationship between urban works have been placed. Christine Bourdette's Cairns, a prolife and the process of growing food. Temporary installations gression of graceful stone stacks, leads travelers to bus and have continued outdoors, as well as in an installation space in train stations. Fernanda D'Agostino's Urban Hydrology, a the city-owned Portland Building. series of diatom-shaped forms made of granite, is located on the Portland State University campus where a biology In the Heart of Downtown student was overheard exclaiming, "I just studied these in The most far-reaching public art endeavor in metropolitan class!" And Daniel Duford's Legend of the Green Man updates Portland is the integration of public art along light rail lines. an archetype with two cast bronze sculptures and a series of The downtown segment of the Green Line was scheduled to graphic-novelesque "historic" markers that span two blocks, open in September 2009 with a major makeover of the Portland playfully conveying the city's legacy of timber, farming, and transit mall featuring newly commissioned sculptures by 14 urban development while inviting everyone to go green.

in Portland

OREGON At the Edge of the City Minutes from downtown Portland, Tryon Creek State Park boasts numerous hiking trails, a stream with steelhead trout, and Natural Cycles, a public art installation series that grew from unusual beginnings. Stephanie Wagner, education director of Friends of Tryon Creek, explains, "Ten years ago I was walking in the park and noticed all these arches over the trail. It was subtle and then it hit me: Someone had done that." The next year came the discovery of leaves and pinecones care-fully arranged in patterns to draw the eye to particular plants, followed by a lean-to with a series of ivy balls leading to the structure.

The work of the park's mystery artist inspired Wagner.

"We never found out who was behind these creations," she says, "but the seeds for Natural Cycles took hold in my mind as a way to celebrate art and the forest." Wagner initiated conversations with local art professors and approached RACC with the idea.

Peggy Kendellen, RACC's public art manager, was supportive and Natural Cycles was born. For each of the past four years, five artists or artist teams have been featured. Among the latest crop of temporary installations is Julie Lindell's Nontrivial Pursuit, a 10-foot ball of debris pierced by giant knitting needles, which seems to ask, "What will we make of this?" Along with branches from downed trees, Lindell incorporated found items including a yellow boot, an ironing board, a broken bicycle. and a bowling trophy.

Although Natural Cycles is on hiatus in 2010, Wagner hopes it will continue, possibly incorporating an artist-inresidence program. "The reason we exist is to develop a stewardship ethic," she notes. "We need places like this for our hearts and souls. Through our encounters with art we are reminded that these places need to be protected."

An Arts Constituency Portland's green ethos is a through line connecting a rich web of public art, public transportation, and public spaces in the metropolitan area. Arts supporters are organizing to retain and strengthen Portland's creative cultural community with a five-year regional campaign to secure expanded arts funding.

While Portland has long had grassroots support for parks and progressive urban planning, the development of a visible and organized arts constituency is newâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and it bodes well for the future.

PAULA MANLEY is an educator, artist, and consultant working with arts, cultural, and community development groups throughout the United States. She is based in Portland, Oregon.

For more information, visit www.paulamanley.com.

ABOVE: Julie Lindell, Hontrmal Pursuit, 2008-2009, Tryon Creek State Park, Portland, OR. MIDDLE + BELOW: Daniel Duford, Legendotthe Green Man (detail and installation view), 2009. Two of eight markers installed along two city blocks in downtown Portland, OR.

67

ON LOCATION MAR, LU KNO Future Transition: Patience Pays O f f for Greater Phoenix

When I first moved to Phoenix, a friend suggested I contact over the diverse crowd, slowly changing color and becoming his former college roommate, Terry Goddard, state Attorney more vibrant as the sun set and the lights on the work, choreoGeneral and former Phoenix mayor. I had coffee with Goddard graphed by artist Paul Deeb, lit up the sky. and we talked about the evolution of public art in Phoenix.

The tiered work, made of flexible, durable materials akin to Under Goddard's leadership, the city began its arts commisfishing nets, recalls the shape of the saguaro cactus flower and sion and public art program gently sways in the night's in 1985 and 1986, with works soft breeze. The work embodscattered about the city in ies the glory of the desert and service of capital projects. In invokes sunlight by changing the years since, the metropolcolors with the temperature itan area has become known throughout the year. for its public art programs.

The work is also a Phoenix and nearby cities perfect mirror for the city's like Scottsdale, Tempe, and own moods—it serves as a Glendale, boast public art link among disparate social initiatives, each with its own and cultural zones. On the goals and support structures northern border of the park is that reveal unique ambitions the Westward Ho Hotel. Built and economic strengths. in the late 1920s, the Ho was one of a chain of high-rise Goddard told me that hotels that drew Hollywood when he was mayor there stars and other celebrities was discussion about trying to Phoenix in the 1950s and to create a "real" downtown, is now HUD housing for although some folks didn't qualified seniors and the think one was necessary. handicapped. To the east is The question was: What role ASU's new Walter Cronkite would the arts play in definSchool of Journalism and ing and describing the matuMass Communication; to ration of the region? After the north is a major public almost 25 years of active pubtransportation hub; to the lic art projects, public art has west runs the new light rail found its unmistakable voice with the refurbished YMCA in defining a new vision for beyond. our desert city. Public art has given Phoenix a heart.

This quadrangle embodA new downtown core ies the economic changes has been formed through a in the region, but promises flurry of building projects— to preserve this balance as largely Arizona State Univerthe city does a death march sity (ASU) buildings, led by into an economic freefall.

Janet Echelman Echelman's work is the very university president Michael . ^Secret is Patience, 2009,Downtown Civic Space, Phoenix, AZ. Crow—with crucial support embodiment of the collaborafrom former governor Janet tive, visionary ideas put forth Napolitano and mayor Phil Gordon. While some were skepti- in ASU's "New American University," where public bodies cal about a city built on the backs of undergrads, there has been engage in meaningful ways with the city that gives it shape and scope. a simultaneous uptick in small, local businesses in the area.

Yet all of these initiatives, from top-down mandates to bottomEchelman's work was almost canceled last fall when city up bars and art galleries, still don't translate into a uniquely and university officials used the work as a red herring to mask construction delays. One city official, who knows quite well identified place with a tangible meaning. This is where public that public art funds are restricted and had largely already art is at its best.

Janet Echelman's floating sculpture Her Secret is Patience, been spent, suggested canceling the work and spending money instead on a series of "ticky-tacky" (my words) plop art.

2009, was inaugurated this spring amid much fanfare at the With public support for the work and expert maneuvering by recently renovated Central Park on Phoenix's Central Avenue Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, the work was saved. This showed corridor. Central Avenue has always been the spine of the however, that despite two decades of works embedded in the city, functioning as a furtive economic thermometer, tracking city, city officials are willing to throw public art under any the divide between social, cultural, and racial communities. financial bus.

The night of the opening, Echelman's work hovered serenely

in Greater Phoenix

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Other works of cultural resonance have also recently been completed. As part of the Valley Metro's light rail system, Einar and Jamex de la Torre's work in central Phoenix, next to the Heard Museum and completed in 2008, provides sly critical commentary on the history of place. The artists used symbols drawn from Meso-American Indian, North American Indian, Aztec, Mayan, Greco-Roman, and contemporary life to decorate various elements on the platform. In particular, the moveable, rectangular bronze "abacuses" draw together symbols to be deciphered as in the Aztec calendar, giving Phoenix what the artists describe as a graphic novel of its own history.

The comical, meaningful "archaeology" of the work connects the region's past to its rapidly changing future.

In Scottsdale, beloved Arizona-based Italian architect Paolo Soleri, best known for his Utopian, self-sustaining city Arcosanti, north of Phoenix, has designed a bridge over a narrow canal. The canal system, originally dug by the Hohokam over 1,000 years ago, has been ignored and paved over, but cities in the region are slowly turning back towards the water.

It will be one of Soleri's few built projects, which makes the commission a risk but holds great emotional resonance for the community. Like the Echelman and the de la Torre projects, the Soleri Pedestrian Bridge is truly rooted in the specific glories—and problems—of the Valley of the Sun. MARILU KNODE, executive director of Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, ivas previously the associate director/head of research for Future Arts Research (FAR) at ASU.

ABOVE: Einar and Jamex de la Torre's interactive, multifaceted artworks for Valley Metro light rail stop at Encanto and Central Avenues in Phoenix, AZ, completed in 2008.

BELOW: Paolo Soleri's concept for a bridge and plaza on the waterfront in Scottsdale, AZ is a joint project of the City of Scottsdale and Scottsdale Public Art. Construction began in 2008.

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69

ON LOCATION

D.ANAG

Outside the Box: SECCA on the Streets o f W i n s t o n - S a l e m

A man moved a heavy cardboard box across Fourth Street in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A woman holding a small dog sat on a park bench nearby. As the man pushed, pulled, and occasionally paused, the woman became more curious. So did people eating lunch at a nearby cafe. One by one, table by table, they noticed the man, heard the sound of the cardboard scraping concrete, and asked themselves the question: What's inside his box?

The simple answer was a watermelon and three giant red beach balls. Those objects, along with the man and woman, were elements in Heavy Box, one of six performance pieces created

by North Carolina artist Lee Walton, and commissioned as part of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's (SECCA) public art program, Inside Out: Artists in the Community II. Walton's performance art focuses on the extraordinary everyday as it slips into public spaces, whispering, avoiding any sense of spectacle. It's an objective perfectly aligned with the mission of Inside Out. SECCA's yearlong program embraces the conceit that all is ephemeral. Seven artists are participating, and midway through this ambitious calendar, city residents are watching, not sure what they might come across, or when.

Inside Out is aptly named, since a massive building renovation forced SECCA to close its doors in January 2009 and move its mission outdoors, out into the community, and out of the box. The project is generating plenty of buzz for a museum supposedly closed for business. In fact, you could say SECCA has never been more open.

"We wanted to extend our hands to the community," says Cliff Dossel, SECCA's installations director and co-curator of Inside Out. "We wanted to bring in the best artists, the right artists, and keep reminding people about SECCA, to keep capturing their attention and reeling them in." Retaining interest is perhaps even more critical for this museum, which in 2007 shifted from being an independent museum to a state-run institution with all new staff.

Inside Out marks a revival of SECCA's public art programming that began in 1993 with its artist residency program, Artist in the Community. During that initial program, artists such as photographer Lesley Dill, sculptor Fred Wilson, and outsider artist Gregory Warmack (a.k.a. Mr. Imagination) spent months in Winston-Salem, creating works in and with the city's community. Since then, public art projects slowed markedly in this former tobacco town which features mainly metal sculptures and narrative murals. There is, however, renewed energy; thanks in part to SECCA's revival, a committed group of local organizers is attempting to create a Curator of Public Art, a position that would function as part of the city council.

Inside Out's participating artists are nothing if not eclectic. In addition to performance art, SECCA is presenting installations, video, and painting. No matter the medium, artists are linking their work to the community, making site-specific pieces based on careful consideration of location and often on the participation of community members. There's good reason Steven Matijcio, SECCA's Curator of Contemporary Art and co-curator of Inside Out, considers the community itself the artists' "raw material."

ABOVE: Mark Jenkins, Sleeper, 2009, at the corner of 3rd & Liberty Streets, Winston-Salem.

BELOW: Roadsworth, Running Water, 2009, cul-de-sac near Winston-Salem State University.

In February, SECCA launched Inside Out with an installation called Rise Up Winston-Salem. Virginia-based sculptor Charlie Brouwer borrowed more than 100 ladders from community members to construct his houselike structure in the heart of Old Salem, the city's historic district. Brouwer knocked on doors throughout the city, meeting bankers and retirees, homeowners and renters, old and young people in his quest to gather material.

Art made with ladders that are at once quotidian and symbolic reflects a common visual language. And, yet, according to Brouwer, who has worked with ladders for years, ladders suggest transcendence, ascent, fragility, security, and a way to reach higher goals. "My intention was to engage the community in making a metaphor of their hopes and aspirations, as they lean on and hold each other up to rise together," he says.

Many people watched as Brouwer constructed the 27- by 16-foot structure on Old Salem's Tavern Meadow, an empty lot

in Winston-Salem

NORTH CAROLINA state's transportation board for an upcoming street painting by the artist Roadsworth, a.k.a. Peter Gibson, who will transform a busyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some say perilousâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;crosswalk near Winston-Salem State University using a stencil-based technique to turn street markings into art. His simple and clever style has, for example, converted painted crosswalks into shoe bottoms, barbed-wire fences, lit candles, and an oversized bathtub drain.

During the city's River Run Film Festival, SECCA projected an eight-minute black-and-white video loop, made by Berlin artist-architect Anna von Gwinner, inside a vacated storefront. From seven in the evening until midnight, the lyrical movements of figure skaters practicing their routine appeared as mysterious silhouettes in the window. Von Gwinner's video generated a sense of curiosity in the otherwise quiet after-hours of downtown. Similar interventions have included projects by Los Angeles-based artist Kianga Ford, who wove neighborhood stories with her own fiction to create an MP3-mediated walking tour of a Winston-Salem neighborhood; and a packing-tape Charlie Brouwer, Rise lip Winston-Salem (with detail below), 2009, installed on the grounds of street installation by Washington D.C.-based Mark Jenkins, who is known for his mysterious urban installations that inject Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem, NC. More at www.charliebrouwer.com. the unusual into the ordinary. One common thread among the disparate projects is the attempt to demonstrate that art is ubiquitous, much more than a four-sided canvas.

"Our audience is fairly sophisticated, but very traditional," says Dossel. "It's hard to convince them that art doesn't just hang on the wall. But art isn't a commodity. It's an experience, which is a large part of why we're doing this."

The culminating public art event featuring artist Michel de Broin is planned for a future date. The artist will create an installation on SECCA's bucolic grounds. De Broin, who lives in Montreal and Berlin, is planning to build a reflecting sculpture that floats on a pond behind the museum. By bringing visitors around to the building's unfamiliar backside, this work keeps with the theme of showing work in unexpected venues, playing with the element of surprise.

"It will be like an iceberg," Matijcio says. It's an absurdist idea, an iceberg floating in the Southeast. It will be an absent nexus, and it will be a fitting finale."

Closing the museum building has been a "blessing in disguise," he says, adding that without the relative safety of next to a barn dating from the mid-1700s. On the final day, a a gallery, SECCA was forced outside and thus connected with woman showed up with her ladder. Not a problem. That too new audiences, people who may now feel "more comfortable" became a piece of this mesmerizing line-filled sculpture that interacting with art. loosely resembled a house with its rectangular shape and its Inside Out has generated so much interest, seducing suggestion of a sloped roof. The installation remained up for audiences with the powerful flirtations of transitory five weeks. intervention into the ordinary, and proved so worthwhile that SECCA's strategy to pick the city's most treasured historic SECCA plans to curate two new public art shows in 2010. Even site, Old Salem, proved successful on many fronts. Thousands though the building renovation will be complete, the museum of people saw Rise Up during its five-week run, so many, in is eager to bring art out into a community that's begun to expect fact, that the grass surrounding the installation was trampled the unexpected. flat, [ust as important, the collaboration between the established historic and the experimental new brought energy to both institutions.

DIANA GREENE is an arts writer and commentator for the Strong collaboration is a key component to SECCA's National Public Radio station in Winston-Salem.

She ivas robust schedule, in part because of the inevitable required the oral historian for the exhibition "A Thousand Words: Photographs by Vietnam Veterans," which is touring museums special permissions. Matijcio and Dossel are working with city nationally. officials, zoning boards, neighborhood groups, and even the

71

ON LOCATION

MYA C U A R N I E R I

Bursting the Bubble: Street A r t in Tel Aviv

On a side street deep in the center of Tel Aviv—a city known to Israelis as "the bubble"—a young Muslim girl confronts passersby. Her face is framed by a hijab. Her hands clutch a book, bearing a stylized Islamic star and crescent, to her chest. And she stares. Unblinking.

She wouldn't be out of place in Yafo, the Arab city south of Tel Aviv. But here, stenciled onto a wall by Paris-based artist C215, her gaze is blindsiding, the weather-worn purple-andwhite image shocking. Is she out of place? Or are the Tel Avivians?

If Israel's mainstream art is a creative result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, then its street art is a more urgent product of this same environment.

Outside the rarefied world of the galleries, street art bursts the Tel Aviv bubble, revealing and then receding into Israel's complicated psyche.

"In L.A. you paint and no one cares," says the artist K74, who was born in Israel and raised in Los Angeles. "In Israel, people get in touch."

On a recent visit to Tel Aviv, K74 used an abandoned building as a canvas for Kiss of Death, an image of two men, one whose head is covered by a Palestinian flag, the other by an Israeli flag. Their lips and noses almost touch but are separated by surgical masks. Draped in nationalism and separated by a stifling, but removable, barrier, they are unable to meet.

K74 put the image up on a Wednesday night. Thursday morning he woke up to laudatory emails. Clearly, he'd struck a nerve.

The public's response is crucial to K74 who, like many street artists, sees his work as a dynamic process. When K74 first put up Kiss of Death in Los Angeles, sans flags, it didn't garner much of a reaction. "People thought it was about the swine flu," he says.

Though K74 insists that his art generally isn't political, he feels that the change of location—and the flags the setting compelled him to add—gave the piece its voice.

Ame72 has seen a similar shift in his work since moving to Tel Aviv from his native Britain four years ago. "It has become more message-driven, more thought-provoking," he says.

"But not everything I do relates to the situation."

Ame72 is best known for his stenciled LEGO men. They sometimes teeter on one foot, trying to keep their balance while carrying, for instance, an oversize pencil, or they are mischievous, fleeing the scene, spray paint canister in toy hand.

The LEGO men are always bright and playful—a refreshing surprise in a city Ame72 describes as "very grey."

And most importantly to Ame72, they make people smile.

"Someone told me that he smiles every time he sees the LEGO man. Every day. That's the most gratifying feedback I've received," Ame72 says. He points out that in that respect, the LEGO men aren't specific to Israel.

But some of his work is.

During Operation Cast Lead, Israel's recent incursion into Gaza, Ame72 felt compelled to bring street art to areas "directly

ABOVE: Stencil by C215, located in central Tel Aviv, 2008.

BELOW: Ame72's LEGO men by the door to a shop in Tel Aviv. On the other side of the entry, a boy, also by Ame72, climbs a ladder, reaching for a dove. See more of Ame72's artwork at www.ame72.com.

impacted by the conflict." During a ceasefire, he headed to Ashkelon and Ashdod, two cities in the south of Israel that had been struck by Hamas-fired rockets. There he did seven paintings on derelict buildings that "looked like they'd been bombed, had been bombed, or were next to buildings that had been bombed," Ame72 says.

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in Tel Aviv

ISRAEL The Ashkelon and Ashdod series were whimsical—a cloud raining frogs, bouncing bunnies, a LEGO man taking aim at a bubble with a paint canister. "The images look smiley and happy," he remarks, "but there is a message to everything. The setting affects the art."

It's equally true that the artist, in turn, impacts the setting.

Another street artist, Inspire, paints simple flowers that bloom in unlikely places throughout Tel Aviv. Discordant in the urban landscape, they encourage the viewer to question the world around them. "My flowers are both challenges and color in the public space," Inspire explains. "They are an act of selfdetermination, and in any prison, or state, the self-determined act will be seen as rebellion."

Like many of Tel Aviv's street artists, Inspire, who was born and raised in Chicago and St. Louis, is a transplant. As much as Israel is a country of immigrants, street art lends itself to migration—street artists often work in multiple cities and the movement, though widespread, owes its roots to the grafflti and street art scenes that flourished in the 1980s in urban America. "Here in the Middle East, we're just riding a wave that others have begun," Inspire reflects.

Still, Israel is unique in that there are few homegrown street artists. "The creative mind here is oppressed," Inspire says. "The truly creative artists are few but dedicated."

Klone Yourself represents, perhaps, the archetypal Israeli street artist. Having immigrated from the former Soviet Union to Israel as a child, he hails from abroad but his work is rooted in the country's imagination. His creatures—slate grey or dark brown with long snouts, sharp protruding teeth, and clawlike hands—are wheat-pasted on the sides of Tel Aviv's trademark Bauhaus buildings.

Klone Yourself remarks, "I was striving to make a new species, mixing animals with humans—the other kind of predators and a much more dangerous one. The human predator is about getting more and more. There's no end to our 'hunting.'

We destroy our surroundings, hurting both nature and people.

ABOVE: Two examples of Klone Yourself's stencil and spray painted creatures in Tel Aviv.

There's a need for some kind of evolution."

BELOW: K74's Kiss of Heath next to a wheat-pasting by Pilpeled on a busy street in Tel Aviv.

K74's Kiss of Death stands alongside a large wheat-pasted image by Pilpeled, who is a native Israeli. An infant peeks out from the mouth of a monstrous mask, pushed back to his brow.

His mouth is agape; his gaze is turned towards the horizon.

There are dark elements: The yawning mask is grotesquely wrinkled, the figure's hands are more adult than child, and its tremendous size is disturbingly incongruous with nature. Still, the image remains hopeful—like Israel.

K74 felt his piece was driving at a similar message.

"Let's take the masks off," he says. K74 thinks it's crucial for Palestinians and Israelis to see each other—and to understand the narratives manifested in each other's public art. "Street art is the language of the people. We need to see what the Palestinians are putting on their walls," he says.

MYA GUARNIERI is a freelance journalist and writer based in Tel Aviv. She is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post.

Her work has also appeared in Outlook India and a wide variety of other international publications.

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C O N F E R E N C E REPORT

IACK

BECKER

Americans for the Arts Annual Convention Seattle, Washington • June 18-20, 2 0 0 9

I've been to more than a dozen Americans for the Arts (AFTA) conferences. It's always a juggling act to schedule a mix of practical information, intellectual challenges, engaging conversations, social time, and local color. I found Seattle to be especially challenging. The weather was abnormally gorgeous—except the day of the bus tours. Most of the panel presentations sounded engaging—but several were booked at the same time. The convention center site was centrally located—but so large and spread out it was hard to find sessions and arrive before they started. And the conference common space was cavernous and unwelcoming. Intimate gathering spots were few and far between, and I actually felt sorry for the exhibitors, lining the perimeter like wallflowers at the prom.

The mood at the conference, like Seattle's weather, swung from glorious to gloomy. For the 1,200 attendees—including more than 300 public art professionals—it was a chance to rekindle friendships, network, and share pain about the worsening economy. Not surprisingly, some regulars were absent due to budget cuts or frozen travel stipends.

Still, the mood among speakers at least was optimistic.

AFTA's president Bob Lynch, in his opening remarks, praised the City of Seattle, with one of the highest ratings for per capita support of the arts. Lynch also cited evidence everywhere that art nonprofits can thrive in this economy. He introduced Bill Ivey, the seventh National Endowment for the Arts chair, who quoted President Obama's chief of staff in referring to the economic crisis as "an opportunity to do the things you could not do before." Janet Brown, from Grantmakers in the Arts, later referred to it as "managing expectations of fear." Yet Holly Sidford, of Helicon Collaborative, advised leaders to "promote dynamic adaptability. Don't be in denial. Organizations that face the facts and start building a fund will survive the next five years." And Norm Dix, the arts-friendly Washington congressman, later summed it all up with his remark: "Smart growth must include the arts!"

For those who wondered what AFTA's Public Art Network (PAN) does, a one-hour "community meeting" offered a show-and-tell, followed by an all-too-brief Q&A. Members of the PAN Council provided an overview of their organizational structure, relationship to AFTA, priorities, and an update on their online resources, including sample RFQs, contracts, and a new blog (sadly, PAN and its blog have been hard to find on AFTA's website). They also announced a forthcoming comprehensive survey of the field (now being compiled).

The keynote speaker, artist Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, gave an illustrated overview of his recent projects, each of which explores history and context, revealing, as he put it, "black holes in people's mental state." His fascinating project for the 52nd Venice Biennale paid tribute to American Indian warriors who were uprooted—and often mistreated—hy Buffalo Bill during his traveling Wild West Shows in Europe.

Among the informative panels I attended was "Public Art and Private Development," with Angela Adams, Arlington County's public art manager; artist Cliff Garten; art consultant Pablo Schugurensky; and Glow Festival artistic director Marc Pally. Pally pointed out that most folks in the private sector are not predisposed to art, and need enthusiastic encouragement.

"Call it marketing, sales, whatever... Go after their money, and be

shameless." He pointed out the need for creative presentation tools to convince funders. Santa Monica's Glow Festival, part of a global movement of all-night events, has proven wildly successful, attracting some 200,000 people.

In spite of the rain, I heard favorable responses to a couple of the public art tours, especially visits to pioneering environmental art such as Herbert Bayer's Earthworks, Robert Morris's Johnson Pit #30, and Lorna Jordan's Waterworks Gardens, a thoroughly engaging transformation of a water reclamation plant.

I enjoyed "Just for Awhile: Temporary Public Artwork in the City," an exploration of temporal efforts by a stellar group of panelists: Julie Courtney, one of the few independent curators producing public art projects in the country; Ruri Yampolsky, Seattle's director of public art; and artists Nicole Kistler and Sarah Ravage. Their Mighty Manimal March, which featured a protest rally of lawn animals, cracked me up.

A few roundtable discussions were refreshingly frank and informative, including one on "Green Public Art" with Betsy Bostwick, public art manager for Clackamas County Arts Action Alliance Foundation in Oregon City, Ore. and artist Stacy Levy. In her session, Patricia Watts, curator of ecoartspace in Occidental, Calif., emphasized programming that can influence communities and their cultural development.

The 2009 PAN Award justifiably went to environmental artist Buster Simpson [pictured above in the center, with John Haworth on the left, and Robert Lynch on the right]. I can't think of anyone more deserving, and obvious, since Simpson's pioneering green art and his longstanding roots in the Seattle public art world nicely fit with the conference's theme, "Renewable Resources: Arts in Sustainable Communities," and its location.

For 2010, and AFTA's 50th anniversary, the conference will be held in Baltimore. The good news for the public artminded, as revealed at the PAN community meeting, is the revival of the public art preconference, allowing the public art folks to focus and connect in more productive ways. Better start saving now for that one.

JACK BECKER is executive director of Forecast Public Art, publisher o/Public Art Review since 1989.

Special thanks t o Pallas Lombardi. lack Mackie, and Karin Wolf for their help with this report.

PACKARD JENNINGS

C O N F E R E N C E REPORT

College o f Tactical Culture New York City, New York • June 30 - July 16, 2 0 0 9

A clown walks up to a cop and plants a big wet one on his riot shield, leaving a smear of fluorescent orange lipstick.

The officer stands still as a statue while a second clown dabs at his heavy armored boots with a fluffy pink feather duster. The clowns then join in a round of the Hokey Pokey directly in front of the imposing line of police. At a loss, the riot squad turns away from the crowd it was sent to control and runs away.

What the hell just happened here and what can I learn from it? This is the curriculum for the College of Tactical Culture (CTC).

In a dark conference room inside the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in Manhattan, a group of visual artists, theater directors, public interest lawyers, academic theorists, community organizers, public-minded designers, and urban planners gather to discuss how art and the use of spectacle can help restructure liberal activism into a more effective force for change. Author and activist Stephen Duncombe conceived the three-week program with artist and activist Steve Lambert on a train ride from Boston, where they had just given a lecture on the efficacy of political art. "Our talk and the questions the audience raised got us thinking about how cultural interventions might be more politically effective."

Lambert explains. "This led us to the idea of a school where creative activists could learn from one another. That became the College of Tactical Culture."

The learning in the college relies on sharing. Each session features a new person who explains skills gained over years of struggle and experimentation or presents a vexing problem he or she is trying to solve. The method can result in comical situations: A clown helps a lawyer strategize on policy, an interventionist shares methods of subversion with a community organizer, and an activist shares how the video game Grand Theft Auto and the city of Las Vegas can guide us to a more just society. Weird, right?

The results are surprisingly successful. The diverse group is bursting with specialized tactical and practical information, which it is eager to share. The enthusiasm is bridled by critical analysis and directed at issues raised by the participants. A problem is posed, say, how to effectively convey complicated

statistics to a marginalized community in a compelling and clear way. Within minutes there are 13 people poring over the issue, building on each other's ideas, and providing different perspectives. The legal, social, architectural, anarchistic, dramatic, cultural, technical, and fantastical are all bandied about to create an effective strategy.

"The college is really a forum where creative activists can come together, teach, learn from one another, and then collaboratively test their chops in real-world political scenarios," Duncombe explains. The analysis and creative force directed at each problem is swift and thorough. Damn, there are some smart clowns out there.

The CTC's focus is on creating spectacle that can help provide momentum for practical policy change. Over-the-top events can move people to action and move the media to cover it. It is the marketing of leftist ideals. Unlike the hollow promises of traditional spectacle—gladiator, rock band, Vegas, the War on Terror—the fantastic actions of CTC participants have a realizable end game. The traditional liberal promises of universal health care, the 30-hour work week, equal rights, and more space for parks are all attainable goals that can be more effectively pitched through a dramatic action. Stephen calls this "ethical spectacle," that is, fantastic events and ideas that have a real payoff.

Unlike many of the large progressive organizations of today, this group is a free-form and headless think tank. It is more akin to a Critical Mass bike ride than a Democratic Party rally. Any member may take the lead and guide the group until the next member jumps off on the issue and moves it further forward. The unifying factor that holds this group together and makes it so effective is the genuine and earnest desire to connect with people and make a positive impact in their lives. It is a group of die-hard patriots who want nothing more than what the Constitution promises us. In other words: a bunch of American dreamers.

PACKARD JENNINGS lives and works in Oakland, California.

His interventionist artwork crosses a range of media including sculpture, illustration, video, and public installation.

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FROM THE HOME FRONT

JON SPAYDE

This spring and summer,

investigators of Minnesota's public art might have been forgiven for

thinking they'd wandered into a science-fiction movie from the 1950s. In Saint Paul, a recreational vehicle mutated into a spider; a Loch Ness-esque monster mysteriously appeared and reappeared in various Minneapolis lakes; and just across the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota, gardens grew defiant.

The spider, or PASPider, to be exact, is a 13-foot Scamp travel trailer (manufactured in Backus, Minn.) with metal legs that move, added by artist Christopher Lutter-Gardella for Public Art Saint Paul (PASP), for which the auto-arachnid is acronymically named. The mobile art center made its debut at St. Paul's Western Sculpture Park on July 25, to the delight of neighborhood kids, and then appeared there through the rest of the summer on certain Tuesdays and Saturday "Art Days."

Each four-hour session brought families together with artists— and with plenty of environmentally friendly, eco-consciously manufactured art supplies.

Minneapolis' own Nessie, better known as the Lake Creature, first apppeared without warning on July 12 in Lake Harriet, part of the city's chain of lakes. With no official announcement beforehand, word of artist Cameron Gainer's brontosaurus-like creature (symbolically titled _[ ), created under the auspices of the city's Parks Foundation, spread virally—on a website (www.lakecreature.com), a Twitter account, and by word of mouth. "Introducing it that way," Parks Foundation president Cecily Hines told an interviewer, "really produced evidence of h o w engaging public art can be. People didn't know w h y it was there or w h o put it there. We didn't want to introduce anything to bias them—we just wanted them to enjoy it."

We don't normally think of gardens as having emotions, but defiant gardens certainly display plenty of attitude.

They're gardens planted and tended under adverse conditions and in surprising places, and Kenneth Helphand of the landscape architecture department of the University of Oregon has written a book about them—specifically, about wartime gardens like the ones created in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Japanese-American interment camps during World War II. "Defiant gardens surprise us by their presence and persistence," writes Helphand. "These are gardens against the odds....

Defiant gardens first astonish by their mere presence, and then they astonish w h e n we recognize the sheer force of will and effort that created and sustained them. Such gardens are interrogative places, prodding us to ask questions."

On September 11, Helphand was on hand to help North Dakota State University and Fargo's Plains Art Museum

ABOVE: Christopher Lutter-Gardella, P i S H l e r , 2009, St. Paul, MN. BELOW: Close-up view of Cameron Gainer's

[ in Lake Harriet, Minneapolis,

inaugurate Defiant Gardens for Fargo-Moorhead, a multiyear project to create defiant gardens in the Fargo (N.D.)-Moorhead (Minn.) area. A two-day symposium introduced the project, and panelists included Forecast's own Jack Becker, veteran Twin Cities public artists Kinji Akagawa and Seitu Jones, conceptualist Mark Dion, "Edible Estates" artist Fritz Haeg, and a host of other artists of varying shades of green.

Words were one important element in a Minneapolis project whose goal was to bring the mostly invisible lives of homeless young people sharply into view. Kulture Klub Collaborative, a Twin Cities meeting place for artists and homeless youth, and the Walker Art Center joined forces to present Home Is Where You Make It from August 3 to 21.

Walker artists-in-residence Lauri Lyons, a photographer, and spoken word artist and activist Tish Jones helped young people

FROM THE HOME FRONT

I 1 | | 2

write life narratives and take black-and-white portraits; then the photos were blown up and m o u n t e d on cardboard. The images became the walls and ceilings of "houses" erected in several places in the Twin Cities, including the Walker, with the goal of bringing visitors close to the literal face of youth homelessness. A commemorative book is also planned, with copies to be given to participants and sold online.

And to end on a solidly upbeat note in a time of downbeat economic and political news, we're delighted to report that on July 22, the St. Paul city council gave Minnesota's capital city its first real public art ordinance. After a lot of hard work and testimony by PASP and other concerned groups, the council voted 4-2 to dedicate 1 percent of eligible public project costs to art. One-half percent of the maintenance portion of the city's capital improvement budget will go for maintenance and restoration of artwork. (Donated art must be accompanied by a maintenance funding plan before it can be accepted.) Best of all, perhaps, the bill stipulates that artists must be involved in project planning early on. I think I can hear the Lake Creature roaring his approval as the Saintly City joins the percent-forart club.

JON SPAYDE is a contributing

editor to Public Art Review.

RIGHT: Lauri Lyons, Home Is Where foil M e II, 2009, various locations in Minneapolis, WIN.

This yG3T marks the 20th anniversary of Forecast's statewide grant program for emerging artists. Here's a brief roundup of the latest group of recipients.

In Remer, Minnesota, a f o r m e r railway depot was transformed

beneficiaries were parishioners o f Redeemer Lutheran Church in

into a multichamber installation by grantee artists Therese Kunz

north Minneapolis. As the artists wrote, "Plates are a symbol o f

and Susan Ugstad. A Lasting Piece: A Collective Collage debuted

s o m e t h i n g that brings all cultures and c o m m u n i t i e s together: the

on September 18 and is a walk-through experience using collage,

need to eat, which has the u n i t i n g power o f c o m m o n experience."

Jane Powers and Rita Davern are using their research and de-

light, and recorded voices and sounds to tell individual, fictionalized stories that weave themselves into a larger narrative.

Other Forecast grantees were busy too: Kao Lee Thao's bill-

velopment grant t o locate sites t h r o u g h o u t the Twin Cities where visual and aural remembrances o f the Dakota people can be cre-

board design evokes H m o n g story cloths and depicts the plight

ated. They will seek out Dakota artists for collaboration in the proj-

of H m o n g soldiers w h o fought for the United States in the Lao-

ect, whose title is Remember. Another recipient, Chris Pennington,

tian theater o f the Vietnam War and fled into the jungle when

is exploring the potential o f the billboard as a versatile public exhi-

their insurgency was defeated. The piece was on view throughout

bition space, with the aid o f local architect Ralph Nelson [render-

October and November at University and Cleveland Avenues in St.

ing pictured above right].

We're proud of the ingenuity, skill, and vision o f these artists

Paul [pictured above left], Anna Metcalfe and Grace Davitt used their skills as ceramic artists all s u m m e r long to foster c o m m u -

and the hundreds o f others we've helped in the past t w o decades.

nity in Thursday Nights Out, a series o f meals the artists cooked

To read more about the artists' projects, and see images and video,

and served on plates o f their design [pictured above middle]. The

visit www.ForecastPublicArt.org.

L E F T : Photo courtesy Billboard Coonectioo. M I D D L E : Photos by Bryan Dawson. R I G H T : Digital rendering courtesy Ralph Nelson, Loom Studio.

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MEDIA FACADES: History, Technology, Content M. Hank Haeusler Ludwigsburg, Germany: Avedition GmbH, 2009 250 pages, $69 (hardcover)

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BACK TO THE CITY: Strategies for Informal Urban Interventions Steffen Lehmann, editor Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2008 260 pages, $55 (hardcover)

A media facade is a surface on w h i c h lights play, with the possibility for illumination, movement, or transfer of information. Media facades enable buildings to become more alive in their environments, and ideally, to communicate with people w h o use these technologically enhanced spaces—to "stimulate the beholder," as Haeusler puts it.

Most public art and architecture is like a w i n d o w on the city. In other words, you see through it, because it was made for mass appeal according to the dictates of well-meaning corporations or city councils. Ideally, art should be a mirror. If you stand in front of the projects documented in Back to the City, you see your city and yourself reflected together.

This photo-packed hardcover reads as a textbook for architects in its depth of technical specifications, and is organized, project by project, from an unrealized 1971 proposal for Paris's Centre Pompidou, to "Ada—the intelligent space" an interactive pavilion at the Swiss National Expo.02. Written by architect Mattias Hank Haeusler, the text begins with a history of media facades, features exhaustive detail of the range of technology and design options (from tungsten light bulbs to voxels, volumetric pixels), and concludes with a smattering of pages concerning content.

The best-known media facades are the many-stories-tall, pixilated billboards in New York City's Times Square, but these commercial signs are only one implementation of this burgeoning technology. More artful projects featured include the German Senckenberg Museum, with w i n d o w screens that (at night) show images of what one might see inside the m u s e u m ; an immersive watery environment in which visitors' actions change the images on the walls and floor (the Acciona Pavilion at the Expo 2008 in Saragossa, Spain); and Project Blinkenlights, a building in Berlin, Germany, on which passersby can play the game Pong via cell phone.

Because media fagades are still in their infancy, with no established industry standards for either hardware or software, all projects incorporating media are custom-made, and so, by definition, site-specific.

The most interesting project mentioned is the computerized brain of a room: "Ada—the intelligent space," created by the Institute of Neuroinfomatics at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). "Ada is the surroundings," explains Haeusler, "whose sensory organs allow her to see, hear and sense touch." Ada responds via sound, light, and projection, in a way that, Haeusler remarks, "is analogous to h u m a n emotional behavior."

This book documents public art-architecture projects that encourage people to build a more personal relationship with their cities. Editor Steffen Lehmann has documented a u n i q u e series of temporary installations created through collaborations between artists and architects. The temporal nature of these installations releases them from rigid political constraints and keeps their energy from being diluted for the masses. The structures gain the power and flexibility to reach out and grab the attention of passersby, directing their gaze outward towards the place they live, and inward towards h o w they live in that place.

One such place is Newcastle, Australia, the site of 18 recent installations that expand consciousness and are featured in the book. Walk through a park and you might encounter huge nestlike objects h u m m i n g with city sounds. Head towards the bus stop, and your path is diverted by moveable screens in the grassy alley you've never noticed. The bus stop has turned into a living room where you'd never live. Back to the City documents these projects primarily with photos and brief descriptions. They are brought into sharper mental detail through critical essays that include 10 case studies.

The essays, ideal for an academic audience, dig deep below the foundational concepts of public art and collaborative processes, revealing their practical and theoretical power.

Readers would enjoy feeling grounded by conversations between artists and architects about their collaborative experiences, should Lehmann organize future explorations.

Hopefully, the lively energy will continue to help people see their environment. Living in a place is one thing. Seeing how you live there is quite another. Interventions such as these may be the new public art we haven't much seen.

ADRIANA GRANT'S visual art reviews have appeared the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Seattle Weekly.

in art ltd.,

DAN WAHL is a mentor for people with creative blocks. He uses participatory public art experiences to facilitate this work.

JON SPAYDE /

ELIZABETH

BOOK REVIEWS

Jaume Plensa

AI WEIWEI

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The Crown Fountain

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AI WEIWEI Karen Smith, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bernard Fibischer, editors London: Phaidon, 2009 160 pages, $49.95 (paperback)

JAUME PLENSA: The Crown Fountain Jaume Plensa, Carsten Ahrens, Keith Patrick Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2008 240 pages, $60 (hardcover)

Burly and bearded, Ai Weiwei looks like one of the rebel heroes in Water Margin, the great novel of dynastic war in early China—but the swords Weiwei wields were forged by Marcel Duchamp and Donald Judd. The Beijing-based artist has created a breathtakingly vigorous body of work by bringing neo-dadaist wit to often-monumental projects that deliver their intense messages with scarcely a wasted gesture.

Son of Ai Qing, the most celebrated poet of republican and early Communist China, Ai Weiwei grew up in the western wastelands of the country, where his father had been exiled after falling from favor. After stints in film school and in the "Stars" group of Beijing artists in the early 1980s. Ai fled for several years to New York, where he found that he was still a dissident: an admirer of Duchamp in the era of neoexpressionism.

He forged a career that ranges from the whimsical (a hanger bent into a profile of Marcel) to the overwhelming: a tower made of the doors of ancient Beijing buildings destroyed in the city's rush to postmodernity. Destruction haunts many of these pieces: an often uneasy fusion of Ai's impulse to shatter the forms of the past, whether they are traditional or Maoist, and apprehension about the actual shattering that is going on in the name of the new totalitarian capitalism.

This work is an excellent introduction to Ai Weiwei's complicated oeuvre. Beijing-based curator Karen Smith contributes a comprehensive review, from the early jeux d'esprit, the Warholian films (hours of Beijing traffic), the perversions of traditional Chinese furniture in which, say, half a table will climb the wall, the assaults on tradition (Neolithic pots—real ones!—dribbled over with cheap house paint), to the large sculptural works. (There could, however, have been more on Ai's foray into architecture, in which he became, briefly and ambivalently, one of the forces in Beijing's hypercapitalist makeover.) Excerpts from Ai's blog show h i m as a savage critic of the regime, which he does not hesitate to describe as "a criminal government," and Fibischer contributes a brilliant analysis of Descending Light, a gigantic fallen red chandelierlike object that manages to fuse the excitement of China's modernity with a warning about the fate of all regimes.

In 1996, a Chicago lawyer discovered that Chicago's railroad-laced beachfront was actually owned by the city, not the railroad. So the city of Chicago took the land back—and today the former industrial quagmire has become Millennium Park, a 24.5-acre center for music, theater, architecture, landscape design, and public art, including The Crown Fountain, created by r e n o w n e d Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa.

Jaume Plensa: The Crown Fountain chronicles the creation of this m o n u m e n t a l sculpture, realized between 2000 and 2004.

The book uses photographs, drawings, and text, including an introduction by the artist, to bring the multifaceted sculpture to life. The fountain is composed of two towering glass-brick fountains that face each other across a paper-flat expanse of water. Images of 1,000 faces (all Chicago residents) are projected onto 50-foot-high LED screens. The sculpture is both icon and theme park, grand gesture and municipal wading pool.

The book does an excellent job highlighting the fountain's many dimensions. Full-page photos capture spontaneous interactions with the sculpture—children wading in the pool and splashing in the spouted water—as well as quiet m o m e n t s of contemplation as people gaze u p at the glowing glass-brick towers. Sketches from Plensa's journals give readers the feeling of looking over his shoulder as he shapes ideas into form.

Wide-angle shots of the skyline make the city a character in the fountain's creation story and link Chicago's architecture to the skyscraper-esque fountain.

While the artist's statement in the book is a bit nebulous, the rest of the narration is straightforward and compelling. It covers the commission, creation, installation, and celebration of the m o n u m e n t , and it puts The Crown Fountain in context both with Plensa's other major installations w o r l d w i d e a n d the history of fountains in the public sphere.

Benefactor Lester Crown, w h o s e financial resources m a d e the fountain possible, challenged Plensa to "dream m e a fountain, something unforgettable, something for Chicago." Today, that dream is a reality. As the book's narrators write. The Crown Fountain is "an icon for the city, acknowledged by architects, artists, and designers the world over, setting a new benchmark for art in public space and redefining the role of the fountain in the twenty-first century."

|ON SPAYDE , a contributing editor to Public Art Review, writes frequently on the arts, spirituality, and modern culture.

ELIZABETH BERG is a freelance

writer in Minneapolis,

Minn.

BOOK REVIEWS

CAPPER N I C H O L S / J O A N N A

RAWSON

PUBLIC ART FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS Michele Cohen New York: The Monacelli Press, 2009 240 pages, $50 (hardcover)

PUBLIC ART IN CANADA: Critical Perspectives Annie Gerin, James S. McLean, editors Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009 336 pages, $35 (paperback)

The history of public art in New York City schools might seem a rather specialized or regional subject, but the story Michele Cohen tells is actually broad in scope and relevance.

First, the five boroughs offer a large sample, with 1,500 schools, 1.1 million students, and 80,000 teachers. More importantly, the author provides satisfying context, explaining the evolution of the city's public school system, its school architecture, its educational philosophy and policy, its mechanisms for arts funding, its public art in general—all to illuminate h o w the means and meaning of art in schools has developed over the past 120 years.

The presentation is chronological, with the first chapter focusing on the 1890s and the art-in-schools movement inspired by Ruskin's notion that art and beauty make for good citizens. Next come two chapters on the Progressive Era, w h e n the boom in immigrant population was matched by a boom in the number and size of school buildings and w h e n school art became an important tool for assimilation. In the fourth chapter, we learn h o w the New Deal institutionalized public art, especially in schools. Cohen next takes u p post-WWII modernism and the emergence of abstraction in school art.

The last three chapters describe the influence of the civil rights movement, the role of the Percent for Arts law in the 1980s, and the eclecticism of New York public school art in the past twenty years.

Each era is beautifully illustrated with numerous images.

In the early chapters the focus is more on architecture, in the latter more on art (though such a distinction is a little misleading: throughout, Cohen emphasizes h o w the two intertwine in schools). The mural has been the dominant form, but we also see examples of stained glass, sculpture, frieze, mosaics, floor and wall and fence designs, and, more recently, participatory art like interactive sound playgrounds.

The book strikes a pleasing balance between text and image, though the large and colorful photographs are more exciting than the prose. But the text is an overview, necessarily, and Cohen effectively summarizes a large, complex, and fascinating story.

Canada has always liked to be seen as the fairest of them all—just in democracy, slow to war, of sound character in matters of public radio, civic service, and a mounted police. But even in these sensible undergarments, the more adventurous artists, curators, critics, and appreciative citizens of Canada can't help but notice the daring fashions their international neighbors have been putting on in public art. Canada, being so fair, has also seemed fairly conservative in the making of its own distinctive public art and a responsive criticism to go with it.

This anthology means to correct that perception. In the estimation of its 18 contributors, it turns out that Canada, since its founding, has been creating and quarreling about its own style of public art—art concerned with expressing a national identity and inspiring change. What do these writers see in the mirror? History, to start with. The book includes substantial essays that reach back in time to parse the economic, aesthetic, and social conditions that inspired such distinctive public projects as the massive Niagara Falls complex and the national airport system—all built to express Canada's self-regard as a modern, free, and wilderness-taming nation.

Later essays m a p specific projects from the 1990s to the present. Here the controversies heat up, as eras of empire, monarchy, and private privilege come into conflict with contemporary life in Canada's multifaceted, often contentious cities. We get a blow-by-blow account of debate over the means and cost of memorializing Montreal's 350th anniversary, and another of the collage artist Johannes Zits' campaign to create "queer space" by plastering Toronto with posters featuring men having sex in glossy, interior-design magazine spreads.

We're squarely in today's Canada in the culminating section of this anthology—right up against brick walls blooming with fresh tags in an especially insightful critique of urban graffiti.

Coeditor James McLean delivers a final argument for bold public art that dissents against dull nationalist consensus, as if to both scold and rouse his fellow citizens. And, for that matter, anyone else in the neighborhood—by which he means, in the new now, the entire tech-connected planet.

CAPPER NICHOLS teaches at the University

JOANNA RAWSON is the author of a new poetry Unrest (Graywolf Press, 2009) and works as a master in Northfield, Minnesota.

of

Minnesota.

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A r t a n d the City Crvic Imagination and Cultural AatbontY in Los Angeles

Sarah Schrank

ARTS OF DEMOCRACY ART. PUBLIC CULTURE. AND THE STATE

Edited by CASEY NELSON BLAKE

SKYSCRAPER The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century

NEW IN PAPERBACK

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THE ARTS OF DEMOCRACY

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California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century

Benjamin Flowers

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Richard Candida Smith

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2009 | 256 pages | 35 illus.

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Experiments in Building and Design

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89

Some of the shapes are created by combining six parts.

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Public art planning Public art project management Civic design visioning Urban design, open space and public realm planning O v e r t h e p a s t s e v e r a l years, t h e a r t i s t A l l a n M c C o l l u m has d e s i g n e d a s y s t e m t o p r o d u c e a series o f u n i q u e t w o - d i m e n s i o n a l " s h a p e s "

Todd W. Bressi

sufficient t o create an individual shape for

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every person o n t h e planet.

610-667-2177 •

P.O. Box 32, Narberth PA 19072 placedesign@verizon.net

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Shapes

for Hamilton

c o m b i n e s t h e Shapes

Project w i t h an earlier sequence of t h e artist's projects t h a t e x p l o r e d ways in w h i c h people construct and identify themselves and their communities w i t h emblems and s y m b o l s . T h e a r t i s t w i l l c r e a t e a set o f u n i q u e shapes, o n e f o r e v e r y r e s i d e n t o f t h e g e o political entity of the Town of Hamilton, N e w Y o r k in a c o m m u n i t y w i d e c o l l a b o r a t i o n t h a t e n g a g e s t h e citizens, local g o v e r n m e n t a n d businesses w i t h t h e a r t i s t a n d t h e s t u dents, staff a n d faculty o f Colgate University.

A f t e r a b r i e f e x h i b i t i o n , t h e Shapes w i l l be d i s t r i b u t e d a t a series o f e v e n t s a t v a r i o u s venues in t h e T o w n ; each resident w i l l be e n t i t l e d t o t h e i r o w n shape, w i t h o u t obligation, provided free of charge and signed by t h e artist.

Artist Talk: February 3, 4:30 pm, Golden A u d i t o r i u m , Little Hall Exhibition: March 8-31, C l i f f o r d Gallery, Little Hall Distribution Events: A p r i l 1-10, Locations t o be announced

Shapes for Hamilton

is m a d e possible w i t h support f r o m The

Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, The A r t and A r t History D e p a r t m e n t and t h e Institute f o r t h e Creative and P e r f o r m i n g Arts at Colgate Unversity.

For f u r t h e r i n f o r m a t i o n o n t h e Institute for t h e Creative and P e r f o r m i n g Arts at Colgate University, please contact Angela Kowalski, (315) 228-6607, akowalski@colgate.edu

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ARIZONA FINE

"Key To The Community" Bronze 14.75"x 6.5"x 9" 1 of 24 works by Colab Studios Commissioned by City of San Jose, California Public Art Program

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BREAKING T H E SILENCE W I T H MURALS T h e O l y m p i a - R a f a h Solidarity M u r a l P r o j e c t is u n d e r w a y in O l y m p i a , W a s h i n g t o n . S i s t e r cities

S U R V I V I N G CANCER M E M O R I A L S

R a f a h , in P a l e s t i n e , a n d O l y m p i a will s o o n e a c h

W h e n d o e s a city t u r n d o w n a $1 million " g i f t " ?

have unique but thematically connected murals

After s u r v i v i n g " t e r m i n a l " l u n g c a n c e r l o n g e r

t h a t aim to help break the current siege on

t h a n his d i a g n o s i s p r e d i c t e d , Richard Bloch,

G a z a t h o u g h artistic and cultural r e s p o n s e s .

c o - f o u n d e r of H&R Block, t h e tax r e t u r n

P r o p o s e d by m u r a l i s t S u s a n G r e e n e , t h e p r o j e c t is a j o i n t e n d e a v o r o f t h e Rachel C o r r i e Foundation for Peace and Justice and the Break t h e S i l e n c e M u r a l A r t s P r o j e c t f r o m S a n Francisco. The m u r a l s seek to raise a w a r e n e s s of h u m a n i t a r i a n i s s u e s in G a z a a n d b r i n g d i v e r s e g r o u p s t o g e t h e r for p e a c e a n d j u s t i c e .

The murals are being c o m p l e t e d cooperatively with m o r e t h a n 1 3 0 a r t i s t s f r o m R a f a h a n d a r o u n d t h e w o r l d . At o v e r 4 , 0 0 0 s q u a r e feet, t h e O l y m p i a - R a f a h M u r a l will b e t h e l a r g e s t m u r a l in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s t o f o c u s o n P a l e s t i n e . T h e m u r a l in O l y m p i a will s o o n h a v e a u d i o t o u r s a c c e s s i b l e by p h o n e d e e p e n i n g t h e i n t e r a c t i o n with v i e w e r s . N e x t s u m m e r t h e p r o j e c t m o v e s

b e h e m o t h , m a d e it his m i s s i o n t o s h a r e his m e s s a g e of h o p e , d e t e r m i n a t i o n , a n d p o s i t i v e t h i n k i n g in t h e b a t t l e a g a i n s t c a n c e r . H i s m e t h o d ? G i v e $1 million, t h r o u g h t h e R.A. Bloch C a n c e r F o u n d a t i o n , t o e a c h of 50 m a j o r m e t r o p o l i t a n a r e a s t o install " c a n c e r s u r v i v o r p l a z a s . " Each p l a z a r e q u i r e s a h i g h - p r o f i l e civic l o c a t i o n , i n c l u s i o n of a c a n c e r s u r v i v o r ' s s t a t u e , 14 " p o s i t i v e m e n t a l a t t i t u d e " p l a q u e s , and a sizeable "Survivors' Plaza" sign crediting t h e F o u n d a t i o n . T w e n t y - f o u r h a v e b e e n built t o d a t e , b u t n o t , in m a n y c a s e s , w i t h o u t controversy.

In 1 9 9 6 , t h e F o u n d a t i o n w o r k e d t o install a m e m o r i a l p l a z a in A u s t i n , Texas, b u t p u b l i c

t o R a f a h in t h e G a z a Strip.

arts advocates, citing c o n c e r n s that included

Photo by Justin

t h e s c a l e of t h e p r o j e c t f o r t h e c h o s e n l o c a t i o n ,

Crawford.

i n a d e q u a t e plans for f u n d i n g and m a i n t e n a n c e , c o r p o r a t e m e s s a g i n g in p u b l i c s p a c e s , a n

UMBRELLA FOR ALL SEASONS

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radial s h o t of y o u r e x a c t l o c a t i o n . Well, n o w you

city o f Beverly Hills p a r t n e r e d with ForYourArt,

m e s s a g i n g w a s i n s e n s i t i v e if n o t i n s u l t i n g t o

c a n ! A J a p a n e s e d e s i g n c o m p a n y , h e a d e d by

t h e Paley C e n t e r f o r M e d i a , a n d t h e f a m e d

t h o s e living with m e t a s t a t i c c a n c e r o r t h o s e

Takashi M a t s u m o t o , h a s created a p r o t o t y p e

G a g o s i a n Gallery t o h o s t a lavish p a r t y in h o n o r

w h o h a d l o s t a loved o n e t o c a n c e r , " s a y s A n n

of a n i n t e r a c t i v e u m b r e l l a t h a t s t r e a m s radial

of a p u b l i c a r t i n s t a l l a t i o n by J a p a n e s e a r t i s t

G r a h a m , a m e m b e r of t h e Art in P u b l i c P l a c e s

i m a g e s of w h e r e you a r e s t a n d i n g o n t o a v i d e o

Yayoi K u s a m a . K u s a m a ' s e x u b e r a n t , p o l k a -

P a n e l in 1 9 9 6 a n d w h o w a s a c t i v e in o p p o s i n g

screen e m b e d d e d u n d e r the canopy of the

d o t - c o v e r e d p i e c e , titled Hymn to Life: Tulips,

the plaza.

s i t s o n t h e c o r n e r o f R o d e o Drive a n d S a n t a

u m b r e l l a . All you n e e d t o d o is look u p . T h e

A c c o r d i n g t o t h e Austin

American-

c a m e r a is a t t a c h e d t o a G P S , s o t h e i m a g e

Monica Boulevard; K u s a m a ' s short films were

Statesman,

s i m u l t a n e o u s l y s c r e e n e d at the G a g o s i a n . T h e

fighting

party f e a t u r e d polka-dot colored c u p c a k e s ,

t h i s t i m e in a n a r g u a b l y h i g h e r - p r o f i l e l o c a t i o n

p i c t u r e s of y o u r e n v i r o n m e n t , d i s p l a y t h e m

p i c n i c l u n c h e s c a t e r e d by a n u p s c a l e b i s t r o ,

(yet with t h e s a m e b u d g e t a l l o t m e n t a s in

on the umbrella video screen, and share t h e m

a n d o t h e r f e s t i v i t i e s in t h e p a r k . T h e p a r t y

1 9 9 6 ) . "If t h e Bloch F o u n d a t i o n w a n t s t o

with y o u r f r i e n d s o n Flickr. Plus, t h e u m b r e l l a

h o s t s e v e n h a d p h o t o g r a p h e r s t a k e digital

d i c t a t e t h e t e r m s of its gift t h r o u g h a h o s t o f

is c o n n e c t e d t o a n o n l i n e m a p a p p l i c a t i o n

p o r t r a i t s of p a r t y - g o e r s in f r o n t of t h e s c u l p t u r e

r e q u i r e m e n t s , it s h o u l d p u r c h a s e p r i v a t e l a n d

t h a t will tell you w h e r e you a r e . To d a t e , t h e

t h e F o u n d a t i o n is o n c e a g a i n

c h a n g e s a s you m o v e . But t h e f u n d o e s n ' t

t o p u t a m e m o r i a l p l a z a in A u s t i n —

s t o p t h e r e : t h e u m b r e l l a a l s o lets you t a k e

t o later b e p o s t e d o n l i n e . F o r Y o u r A r t ' s a r c h i v e s ,

a n d n o t look t o o u r city t o p r o v i d e p r i m e real

u m b r e l l a is n o t a v a i l a b l e for sale, b u t t h e

m a p s , b l o g s , a n d v i d e o s a r e all w o r t h c h e c k i n g

e s t a t e for a p l a z a t h a t d o e s n o t w e l c o m e all

c r e a t o r s h o p e it will b e s o o n . M o r e at www.

o u t online at l o s a n g e l e s . f o r y o u r a r t . c o m .

citizens," says G r a h a m .

p i l e u s . n e t . Photo © Pileus LLC / Keio

University.

NEWS

ART PARK FEVER Art p a r k f e v e r is s w e e p i n g t h e n a t i o n . C h i c a g o ' s

a b o v e ) . T h e P a p p a j o h n S c u l p t u r e Park in D e s

M i l l e n n i u m Park s e e m e d t o kick-start t h e t r e n d

M o i n e s h a s b e e n d e s c r i b e d a s o n e of t h e m o s t

a n d n o w cities f r o m B a l t i m o r e t o Las V e g a s

a m b i t i o u s p u b l i c art p r o j e c t s in t h e c o u n t r y

h a v e t h e i r o w n p r o m i n e n t art g a r d e n s . T h i s

a n d its s c u l p t u r e c o l l e c t i o n is v a l u e d at

year w i t n e s s e d t h e c o m p l e t i o n of t w o n e w art

a r o u n d $ 3 0 million. N o w o n d e r , c o n s i d e r i n g

p a r k s : C i t y g a r d e n o n G a t e w a y Mall in St. Louis,

t h e m a r q u e e a r t i s t s : Richard S e r r a , W i l l e m d e

M i s s o u r i , a n d t h e P a p p a j o h n S c u l p t u r e Park

Kooning, D e b o r a h Butterfield, and M a r k d i

in d o w n t o w n D e s M o i n e s , Iowa. C i t y g a r d e n

S u v e r o , t o n a m e j u s t a few. All t h e s c u l p t u r e

c o m p r i s e s 2.9 a c r e s f e a t u r i n g s c u l p t u r e ,

is b e i n g d o n a t e d by D e s M o i n e s c o u p l e J o h n

architecture, f o u n t a i n s , pools, and a cafe.

and Mary P a p p a j o h n , w h o are ranked a m o n g

It is u n f e n c e d , f r e e , a n d o p e n t o t h e p u b l i c .

t h e w o r l d ' s t o p p r i v a t e c o l l e c t o r s o f art; t h e

City officials h o p e t h e p a r k will h e l p revitalize

d o n a t i o n is t h e s i n g l e l a r g e s t p u b l i c gift o f art

d o w n t o w n and bring new b u s i n e s s to the

area.

Park g o e r s c a n u s e t h e i r cell p h o n e s t o call f o r i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t s c u l p t u r e s or hear special

in Iowa history. T h e p a r k o p e n e d a t t h e e n d of S e p t e m b e r .

BIG ART O N TV W h o a r e t h e h o t n e w reality TV s t a r s in Britain?

Big p i e c e s o f p u b l i c art. B r i t a i n ' s C h a n n e l 4 r e c e n t l y l a u n c h e d a f o u r - p a r t s e r i e s c a l l e d The Big Art Project, in w h i c h m e m b e r s o f t h e p u b l i c were asked to n o m i n a t e sites a r o u n d t h e c o u n t r y w h e r e t h e y w a n t e d t o s e e p u b l i c art.

The s h o w ' s selection c o m m i t t e e then c h o s e seven winning sites (from the over 1,400 p r o p o s a l s t h a t f l o o d e d in). A highly r e g a r d e d

N e x t u p ? Las V e g a s ' s M G M M i r a g e H o t e l

a r t i s t o r a r t s g r o u p w a s c h o s e n f o r e a c h Big

m u s i c recordings as they w a n d e r t h r o u g h

C a s i n o ' s $ 4 0 million p u b l i c art c o l l e c t i o n o p e n s

t h e park. A r t i s t s r e p r e s e n t e d i n c l u d e G e o r g e

Art s i t e : G r e y w o r l d f o r a s i t e in Burnley; J e p p e

this December, and a three-acre sculpture park

Rickey, Niki d e S a i n t Phalle, T o m O t t e r n e s s ,

H e i n f o r t h e Isle o f Mull; m u f f o r N e w h a m ;

in M i a m i B e a c h , Florida, is s e t t o o p e n in 2 0 1 1 .

M a r k d i Suvero, and BernarVenet (pictured

Rafael L o z a n o - H e m m e r f o r C a r d i g a n ; Claire

Photo ©Hedrich

O b o u s s i e r and Vong Phaophanit for North

Blessing, by Steve

Hall.

B e l f a s t ; a n d J a u m e P l e n s a f o r St. H e l e n s .

P l e n s a ' s s p e c t a c u l a r Dream

sculpture

a t S u t t o n M a n o r Colliery ( p i c t u r e d a b o v e d u r i n g i n s t a l l a t i o n ) w a s c o m p l e t e d last May a t a c o s t of f l .9 m i l l i o n . T h e s c u l p t u r e d e p i c t s t h e e n l o n g a t e d h e a d o f a y o u n g girl, s t a n d i n g 2 0 m e t e r s tall, in l u m i n e s c e n t w h i t e c o n c r e t e .

The show chronicles the s u b s e q u e n t c o m m i s s i o n and creation of each p i e c e — a n d t h e joys a n d c h a l l e n g e s t h a t w e n t a l o n g w i t h s u c h big p r o j e c t s ( t h e big in t h e s h o w ' s title is m e a n t to refer both to t h e g e o g r a p h i c s c o p e of t h e project and t h e actual physical size of e a c h i n s t a l l a t i o n ) . T h e l a r g e r (or bigger, n a t c h ) a i m of t h e s h o w is t o e n g a g e v i e w e r s in a d i s c u s s i o n a b o u t t h e s t a t e of p u b l i c a r t

FUTURECITY SEATING

in Britain t o d a y .

F o u n d e r of t h e U K - b a s e d c u l t u r a l c o n s u l t a n c y

a silvery N e w - A g e s h e e n , i n v i t e s t h e p u b l i c t o

Futurecity, M a r k Davy b e l i e v e s t h a t p u b l i c art

s t o p , lean b a c k , a n d g a z e u p a t t h e sky d u r i n g

is m o r e t h a n j u s t a n a d d - o n . It's a c u l t u r a l

a stroll t h r o u g h t h e city. T h e m o d u l e s look

United States for a small fee u p o n request.

n e c e s s i t y in s o c i e t i e s like t h e U n i t e d K i n g d o m

incredibly s i m i l a r t o alien s p a c e c r a f t .

Contact Carbon Media for m o r e details:

t h a t v a l u e i d e a s . But first, it h a s t o b e v a l u e d

Futurecity h o p e s t o install S k y s t a t i o n s in

by t h e p e o p l e in t h o s e s o c i e t i e s . "If w e w a n t

100 locations across the United Kingdom and

art t o b e t a k e n m o r e s e r i o u s l y , " s a y s Davy,

the world, creating Skystation "constellations,"

"it h a s t o b e m o r e i n g r a i n e d in t h i n g s t h a t

a n d c r e a t i n g a w h o l e n e t w o r k of i n t e r c o n n e c t e d

D V D s of t h e s h o w a r e a v a i l a b l e in t h e

www.carbonhq.com/welcome.

Photo © 2009 Mike

Christie.

g o o n in o u r lives o n a d a y - t o - d a y b a s i s . " To

p u b l i c art. Says Davy, " W h y h a v e a b e n c h

f u r t h e r his c a u s e a n d b r i n g m o r e art t o t h e

w h e n you can have a beautiful object that

m a s s e s , Futurecity h a s l a u n c h e d a n i n t e r a c t i v e

can be both o b s e r v e d a n d u s e d ? " W h e t h e r or

s c u l p t u r a l s e a t i n g p r o j e c t by t h e a r t i s t P e t e r

n o t t h e p u b l i c will t a k e t h e s e p u b l i c b e n c h e s

office@ForecastPublicArt.org

N e w m a n , called S k y s t a t i o n . S k y s t a t i o n , w h i c h

"seriously" remains to be seen.

S u b m i s s i o n r e v i e w is o n g o i n g .

c o m p r i s e s d o n u t - s h a p e d seating m o d u l e s with

Photo courtesy

Futurecity.

S e n d y o u r l a t e s t p u b l i c art NEWS and RECENT PROJECTS to:

93

NEWS

MOSAIC-MAKING MACHINE T h e h i g h - t e c h m o s a i c c o m p a n y Artaic h a s developed software and robotic technology to c r e a t e i n t r i c a t e , s p e c t a c u l a r l y s c a l e d , sites p e c i f i c m o s a i c m u r a l s in r e c o r d t i m e . T h e s o f t w a r e (which Artaic s h a r e s freely) g i v e s c o m p l e t e control to artists, allowing t h e m to m a n i p u l a t e t h e color, m a t e r i a l , layout, a n d m o s a i c imagery prior to m a n u f a c t u r e , while t h e r o b o t i c a s s e m b l y r e m o v e s t h e t e d i u m of

ART C O N E W I L D I N VANCOUVER T h e city of V a n c o u v e r h a s l a u n c h e d a W i n t e r

B i e n n a l e , a n d t h e y will r e m a i n in p l a c e for 18

h a n d - p i c k i n g e a c h tile, w h i c h is a relief w h e n

O l y m p i c s p u b l i c art p r o g r a m a s it g e t s r e a d y

t o 2 0 m o n t h s ( p i c t u r e d a b o v e is Yue M i n j u n ' s

it c o m e s t o p r o j e c t s of t h i s s c a l e . T h e u n i q u e

t o h o s t t h e e v e n t in 2 0 1 0 . T h e M a p p i n g a n d

A-Maze-ing

M a r k i n g V a n c o u v e r 2 0 1 0 p r o j e c t , for w h i c h

h a v e q u i e t e d s o m e a s p e c t s of t h e B i e n n a l e

sible, a n d t h e c o m p a n y a l s o o f f e r s t r a n s l u c e n t

Laughter).

The impending Olympics

p r o c e s s m e a n s t h a t a l m o s t a n y d e s i g n is p o s -

s e v e n p i e c e s will b e i n s t a l l e d in t i m e f o r t h e

t h i s year, say a r t s a d v o c a t e s , n o t i n g t h a t t h e

back-lit tile for c l i e n t s w h o w a n t t o c r e a t e a n

O l y m p i c s , is a l s o a pilot p r o j e c t f o r a b r o a d e r

m o r e c o n t r o v e r s i a l s c u l p t u r e s in t h e B i e n n a l e

innovative and unique a m b i a n c e . Due to their

10-year p l a n t o s t r e n g t h e n t h e city's a r t s

h a v e b e e n h o u s e d in t h e n e i g h b o r i n g t o w n of

inherent durability a n d visual i m p a c t , m o s a i c s

c o m m u n i t y a n d e c o n o m y . (The 10-year p l a n

Richmond so they do not c a u s e controversy

a r e u s e d widely f o r p u b l i c art i n s t a l l a t i o n s .

a i m s t o c h a n g e h o w p u b l i c art is i n s t a l l e d

w h e n t h e G a m e s hit t o w n .

in V a n c o u v e r , s w i t c h i n g f r o m t h e t r a d i t i o n a l

But m o s a i c is a n a n c i e n t art f o r m , with

As if t h e city w e r e n ' t a l r e a d y b u r s t i n g a t

a unique c h a r m that c o m e s f r o m work d o n e

c o m m i s s i o n m o d e l to an artist-inspired

its a r t i s t i c s e a m s , at l e a s t t h r e e h i g h - p r o f i l e

by h a n d a n d t h e ability t o i n s p i r e a w e by s h e e r

model.) Two traditionally c o m m i s s i o n e d

p u b l i c a r t w o r k s by p r o m i n e n t a r t i s t s ( M a r i a n n e

v o l u m e of t i m e a n d e n e r g y s p e n t laying e a c h

art i n s t a l l a t i o n s will a c c o m p a n y t h e s e v e n

N i c o l s o n , O Z h a n g , a n d Erica S t o c k i n g )

p i e c e . Even if m a c h i n e - d o n e m o s a i c m u r a l s

M a p p i n g and Marking pieces, o n e on t h e

h a v e g o n e u p in V a n c o u v e r in t h e p a s t t w o

w i t h s t a n d t h e t e s t of t i m e , will t h e y still h a v e

e n t r a n c e to O l y m p i c Plaza a n d o n e u n d e r t h e

y e a r s , a n d t h e city's p u b l i c t r a n s i t s y s t e m h a s

t h a t t i m e l e s s a p p e a l ? To s e e e x a m p l e s of

C a m b i e S t r e e t Bridge.

l a u n c h e d a n initiative t o p u t art a t s t a t i o n

Artaic's work, or to o r d e r your o w n c u s t o m

platforms and on the b u s s e s themselves.

m o s a i c m u r a l , visit w w w . a r t a i c . c o m .

s p r a w l i n g a r t s e v e n t t h a t t u r n s t h e city's bike

T o p it all o f f with a n e w m e d i a a n d i n t e r a c t i v e

Photo courtesy

p a t h s and parks into an o u t d o o r m u s e u m . A

art festival t h i s s p r i n g , a n d you h a v e a t o w n

t o t a l o f 3 0 s c u l p t u r e s w e n t u p a s p a r t of t h e

o v e r f l o w i n g with art. Photo by Dan

Add to this t h e Vancouver Biennale, a

Artaic.

Fairchild.

ART:21 T U R N S FIVE The Peabody Award-winning series

PUBLICEARTH GOES PUBLIC

Art in the Twenty-First

Art:21â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

Century b e g a n its fifth

P u b l i c E a r t h , t h e n e w wiki-style o n l i n e m a p p i n g

s e a s o n t h i s fall o n PBS with f o u r h o u r - l o n g

t o o l , w e n t live o n N o v e m b e r 1 7th. At t h i s

e p i s o d e s , e a c h loosely o r g a n i z e d a r o u n d a

point, their website offers an ever-expanding

unique theme: compassion, transformation,

d a t a b a s e of nearly 5 million p l a c e s , a c r o s s 4 0 0

f a n t a s y , a n d s y s t e m s . Each e p i s o d e e x p l o r e s

categories. "Web search results are d o m i n a t e d

t h e w o r k of t h r e e t o f o u r a r t i s t s a n d e n d e a v o r

with b u s i n e s s e s a n d r e s t a u r a n t s , " s a y s f o u n d e r

to e n g a g e viewers to articulate their own ideas

D u n c a n McCall. " W e c r e a t e d P u b l i c E a r t h t o b e

a b o u t art. S e a s o n five f e a t u r e s s o m e m a j o r

t h e o n e s o u r c e for e v e r y t h i n g t h a t is i n t e r e s t i n g

figures

a b o u t w h e r e you a r e r i g h t now, o r w h e r e y o u ' r e

William K e n t r i d g e , Jeff K o o n s , J o h n B a l d e s s a r i ,

g o i n g . " T h e s e r v i c e h a s p a r t n e r e d with F o r e c a s t

a n d Allan M c C o l l u m .

P u b l i c Art t o h e l p g e o - c o d e p u b l i c art p r o j e c t s

in p u b l i c art, i n c l u d i n g K i m s o o j a ,

Art:21, t h e n o n p r o f i t o r g a n i z a t i o n t h a t

c o v e r e d in b a c k i s s u e s of Public Art Review.

p r o d u c e s t h e TV s e r i e s , will a l s o r e l e a s e a n

D o z e n s of p u b l i c art p r o g r a m a d m i n i s t r a t o r s

e d u c a t o r s ' guide and c o m p a n i o n w o r k b o o k for

h e l p e d a d d p o i n t s o n t h e m a p d u r i n g t h e Beta

s t u d e n t s , a n d D V D s of t h e fifth s e a s o n will b e

p h a s e . F o r e c a s t ' s f o u n d i n g d i r e c t o r Jack B e c k e r

a v a i l a b l e t h r o u g h t h e PBS w e b s i t e . V i d e o c l i p s

e n v i s i o n s a n u n p a r a l l e l e d e d u c a t i o n a l tool

of t h e s h o w a r e a v a i l a b l e o n l i n e a t YouTube,

f o r l e a r n i n g a b o u t p u b l i c art in s i t u . Visit t h e

iTunes, a n d H u l u . Art:21 a l s o h o s t s e d u c a t o r

w e b s i t e at w w w . P u b l i c E a r t h . c o m t o c h e c k for

w o r k s h o p s a n d k e e p s a b l o g with daily a r t i s t

newly a d d e d c o n t e n t a n d d o w n l o a d t h e m o b i l e

u p d a t e s , weekly c o l u m n s , a n d e x c l u s i v e v i d e o s .

application; then add your own information

T h e o r g a n i z a t i o n is b a s e d in N e w York City,

a b o u t p u b l i c art a n y w h e r e in t h e w o r l d .

but reaches a global a u d i e n c e t h r o u g h

Photo courtesy

television and online.

PublicEarth.

NEWS

A N D Y SCOTT'S BIC M A N PROJECT Scottish sculptor Andy Scott, creator of

t h e m a n ' s legs, which d o u b l e a s b a s e s for t h e

t h e w e l l - k n o w n Heavy Horse s c u l p t u r e t h a t

b r i d g e , will s t r a d d l e o n e of t h e t h r e e p a t h s t h a t

s i t s n e a r t h e M 8 m o t o r w a y in G l a s g o w , h a s

c o n n e c t at a c i r c u l a r p o i n t at t h e c e n t e r of t h e

d e s i g n e d a new bridge s u p p o r t for a p r o p o s e d

b r i d g e . T h e m a n will s t a n d o v e r 1 0 0 f e e t tall.

f o o t p a t h t h a t will s t a n d o n t h e S t o c k i n g f i e l d

"I t h i n k it will b e a f a n t a s t i c a d d i t i o n t o t h e

J u n c t i o n of t h e Forth a n d Clyde C a n a l in

skyline of t h e city," s a y s S c o t t . O f f i c i a l s h o p e

J E A N N E - C L A U D E DIES AT A C E 74

Maryhill, G l a s g o w . S c o t t ' s d e s i g n is in t h e

t h e s c u l p t u r e will b r i n g a n e w vitality t o t h e city

Jeanne-Claude, the

s h a p e of a g i a n t m a n — t h i n k of t h e i l l u s t r a t i o n

of Glasgow. W h a t inspired Scott's design? "The

C h r i s t o a n d c o - a u t h o r of m a j o r m o n u m e n t a l

of Atlas, t h e p e r f e c t l y t r i a n g u l a r , w e l l - m u s c l e d

key t h i n g w a s t h a t it fired u p t h e i m a g i n a t i o n

e n v i r o n m e n t a l art i n s t a l l a t i o n s , d i e d N o v e m b e r

m a n o n t h e p o p u l a r p a p e r b a c k c o p y of Atlas

of t h e e n g i n e e r s a n d t h e l a n d s c a p e d e s i g n e r , "

18 a t h e r h o m e in M a n h a t t a n a t t h e a g e o f

Shrugged ( e x c e p t t h i s m a n is s t a n d i n g tall, n o t

s a y s S c o t t . " T h a t ' s w h e n w e b e g a n t o really g e t

74. T h e c a u s e w a s i d e n t i f i e d o n t h e c o u p l e ' s

crouching)—with a r m s outstretched over the

i n t o it. O n e s k e t c h really b e g a n t o click with

website, www.chritsojeanneclaude.net, as a

bridge, h a n d s holding t h e s u p p o r t cables;

p e o p l e . " Rendering courtesy the artist.

result of c o m p l i c a t i o n s d u e t o a r u p t u r e d brain

fiery-haired

partner of

a n e u r y s m . T h e site f u r t h e r affirms C h r i s t o ' s c o m m i t m e n t to completing their current works in p r o g r e s s , i n c l u d i n g Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado;

a n d The

Mastaba,

Emirates',

Project for the United Arab

"as Jeanne-Claude would have wished."

Jeanne-Claude and Christo, b o m on the

PublicArtReview

s a m e d a t e in 1 9 3 5 , m e t in P a r i s in 1 9 5 8 a n d c r e a t e d : Running Fence, Wrapped Reichstag, The Umbrellas,

www.ForecastPublicArt.org

COMING . . ..

SPRING 2010 : Australia

Pont Neuf Wrapped, a n d The Cates

f o r C e n t r a l Park. " S h e is a p o w e r h o u s e a n d a t r u e f o r c e t o t h e art w o r l d , " l a m e n t e d S t e v i e Famulari, e n v i r o n m e n t a l artist and m e m b e r of The Cates crew. " S h e s e t a h i g h s t a n d a r d with h e r s t r e n g t h , e n e r g y , p a s s i o n , s t r o n g will a n d d e v o t i o n . H e r i n f l u e n c e is u n d e n i a b l e . "

and New Zealand

Photo by Regina

Flanagan.

Celebrating 24 Years of Public Art in Kansas City!

Jun Kaneko Wafer Plaza

Chris Doyle The Moons

Avenue of the Arts 10th Anniversary -

K a n s a s City, M O M u n i c i p a l A r t C o m m i s s i o n

Wopo Holup The River

Gordon Huether Red Eye

www.kcmo.org/cimo.nsf/web/art

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

F E A T U R E D PROJECT

by Sarah

Baker

T h e artist behind d o w n t o w n O m a h a ' s mural, FERTILE G R O U N D â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a t 3 2 , 5 0 0 s q u a r e f e e t , o n e o f t h e l a r g e s t in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; i s a s d o w n t o - e a r t h a s t h e t o w n w h e r e h e r art lives.

D e d i c a t e d in J u n e 2 0 0 9 , M e g S a l i g m a n ' s m u r a l c o v e r s t h e e a s t s i d e o f t h e Energy S y s t e m s Building at T h i r t e e n t h a n d W e b s t e r streets; t h e site-specific work a i m s to c a p t u r e t h e r e g i o n ' s e s s e n c e with i m a g e r y a n d c o n t e n t ,

T h e p i e c e s h o w s t h e h i s t o r y of O m a h a ,

p r o j e c t in L o u i s i a n a . As s h e d r e w e a c h e l e m e n t

including natural and urban landscapes and

b e g i n n i n g with w e s t w a r d e x p a n s i o n a n d c o n -

of t h e m u r a l s h e i n c l u d e d n u m b e r s t h a t

i m a g e s of a c t u a l O m a h a n a t i v e s , d r a w n directly

t i n u i n g t h r o u g h t h e p r e s e n t day. Each c h a r a c t e r

c o r r e l a t e with c o l o r s . V o l u n t e e r s filled it in p e r

f r o m t h e s i t e itself. "Two m a j o r t h e m e s of t h e

in t h e p i e c e a c t s a s a s y m b o l of life in O m a h a :

h e r i n s t r u c t i o n . " T h e i n t e r a c t i o n with p e o p l e

mural are c o n v e r g e n c e and depth," Saligman

S o m e p e o p l e frolic t h r o u g h fields, o t h e r s inter-

is an i m p o r t a n t p a r t of t h e w o r k , " S a l i g m a n

e x p l a i n s , " i n c l u d i n g d e p t h of c h a r a c t e r , sky,

a c t with o n e a n o t h e r . S o m e g a z e c a n d i d l y o u t

e x p l a i n s . " W h e n it c o m e s t o t r a n s l a t i n g a

history, a n d l a n d s c a p e . "

of t h e p i e c e , directly e n g a g i n g t h e viewer.

collective voice f r o m a c o m m u n i t y into o n e

As s h e w o r k e d o n t h e p r o j e c t d u r i n g t h e

H i s t o r y c o m e s i n t o play t h r o u g h i m a g e s

p u b l i c i m a g e , I a m a v e s s e l with a v i s i o n . "

p a s t t w o s u m m e r s , S a l i g m a n a n d h e r t e a m of

of a r c h i t e c t u r e , t r a d i t i o n , a n d r e - c r e a t i o n s o f

10 a r t i s t s invited l o c a l s , i n c l u d i n g o t h e r a r t i s t s ,

e v e n t s . O m a h a ' s real d o w n t o w n skyline over-

t i m e - l a p s e v i d e o of t h e m u r a l ' s c r e a t i o n is available at w w w . o m a h a m u r a l p r o j e c t . o r g .

university s t u d e n t s , a n d even a few p e o p l e w h o

l o o k s t h e m u r a l , a n d t h e e d g e s of t h e p a i n t i n g

j u s t h a p p e n e d t o stroll by a n d s h o w i n t e r e s t , t o

a n d t h e lines o f t h e city s e e m t o m e l d t o g e t h e r

work with her on t h e piece. She and her t e a m

seamlessly; this c o u l d n ' t be m o r e a p p r o p r i a t e .

c o m p l e t e d t h e p i e c e in early O c t o b e r .

" P u b l i c art like t h i s e n h a n c e s daily life,"

C a m e r a s recorded S a l i g m a n ' s work, and

T h e B e m i s C e n t e r for C o n t e m p o r a r y Arts a c t e d a s t h e p r o j e c t c o o r d i n a t o r f o r Fertile Ground, a n d its d i r e c t o r , M a r k M a s u o k a , s a i d

S a l i g m a n ' s m u r a l s are r e n o w n e d for

s a i d Lyn Wallin Z i e g e n b e i n , d i r e c t o r of t h e

the Center h a s plans to u s e the

their focus on community, theatrical presence,

P e t e r Kiewit F o u n d a t i o n , t h e c o m p a n y t h a t

in its e d u c a t i o n a l p r o g r a m m i n g a n d t o c r e a t e

finished

piece

a n d c o l o r f u l i m a g e r y . T h e O m a h a p i e c e is n o

f u n d e d t h e p r o j e c t . " W e h o p e t h i s m u r a l will

a s h o r t d o c u m e n t a r y film a b o u t S a l i g m a n

e x c e p t i o n . Even o n a r e c e n t cloudy, c o l d fall

b e c o m e a f a m i l i a r local l a n d m a r k a n d a s y m b o l

a n d h e r w o r k . " T h e o u t c o m e o f t h i s p r o j e c t is

a f t e r n o o n , the piece j u m p s out f r o m blocks

of pride."

away. S e t a m i d a b r i g h t b l u e sky, t h e c h a r a c t e r s

W h i l e m o s t of t h e p i e c e u s e s w h a t

c e n t r a l t o t h e idea t h a t a r t s - i n t e g r a t e d e d u c a t i o n a n d p u b l i c art a r e c e n t r a l t o t h e e d u c a t i o n

in t h e m u r a l e a c h h a v e a d i s t i n c t p e r s o n a l i t y ; it

S a l i g m a n calls " h u g e b r u s h s t r o k e s , " a b o u t

is c l e a r S a l i g m a n w o r k e d f r o m real life. B e f o r e

a q u a r t e r o f it d e m o n s t r a t e s h e r s i n g u l a r

M a s u o k a s a i d . Pictured above are two views of

starting the mural, s h e c o m p l e t e d h u n d r e d s of

process, similar to a paint-by-number project.

the mural and an assistant working on the wall.

of s t u d e n t s a n d m e m b e r s of t h e c o m m u n i t y , "

p h o t o s t u d i e s of local p e o p l e , c h o o s i n g 4 6 f o r

S h e c a m e u p with t h e idea, s h e s a i d , w h e n

Photos courtesy the artist. Sarah Baker lives in

t h e final p a i n t i n g .

w o r k i n g with m o r e t h a n 2 , 0 0 0 v o l u n t e e r s o n a

Omaha

and writes about visual art.

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

W h a t began as a project to expand and u p d a t e t h e o u t m o d e d H E N R Y M A D D E N LIBRARY at California S t a t e University, F r e s n o , t u r n e d into a beautiful and unique public artwork in 2 0 0 9 t h a t h o n o r s t h e legacy o f t h e M o n o -

P e n n s y l v a n i a a r t i s t Stacy Levy's 2 0 0 9 c o m -

C h u k c h a n s i t r i b e of I n d i a n s . In a d d i t i o n t o a n

m i s s i o n , TAMPA W I N D , r e c r e a t e s a s e c t i o n

elliptical e n t r y t o w e r i n s p i r e d by t h e t r i b e ' s

o f t h e H i l l s b o r o u g h River a s it p a s s e s t h r o u g h

b a s k e t s a n d m a d e of w o o d e n lattice a n d z i n c ,

t h e e a s t e r n e d g e t h e U n i v e r s i t y of S o u t h e r n

L.A.'s N a r d u l i S t u d i o a n d a t e a m of H o l l y w o o d

F l o r i d a ' s T a m p a C a m p u s o n t h e s i d e of t h e

digital m e d i a e x p e r t s p r o d u c e d a n u n u s u a l

f o u r - s t o r y N a t u r a l a n d E n v i r o n m e n t a l Build-

and compelling high-tech installation. T h e

ing. R u n n i n g t h e full l e n g t h o f t h e b u i l d i n g ,

s t u d i o , h e a d e d by S u s a n N a r d u l i , p r o d u c e d a

the artwork c o m p r i s e s over 2,000 fabricated

d o c u m e n t a r y of o n e of t h e last tribal b a s k e t

s t a i n l e s s s t e e l d i s c s t h a t r e f l e c t t h e light a n d

m a s t e r s , Lois C o n n o r , w e a v i n g a b a s k e t f r o m

environmental conditions around campus.

s t a r t t o finish, a p r o c e s s t h a t t a k e s 11 m o n t h s .

W h e n t h e w i n d b l o w s , t h e d i s c s m o v e with it,

T h e film plays at o n e - h a l f t o o n e - t h i r d s p e e d o n

c h a n g i n g t h e r e f l e c t e d light a n d e v o k i n g t h e

a 4 3 - f o o t , t r a n s p a r e n t digital c u r t a i n m o u n t e d

m o v e m e n t of w a t e r t h r o u g h t h e river. As a

o n t h e i n t e r i o r of t h e library's l a r g e g l a s s wall.

s c u l p t o r , S t a c y Levy is i n t e r e s t e d in art, s c i e n c e ,

At t h a t r a t e , s t u d e n t s will likely s e e t h e film

a n d t h e natural world, and s h e often works with

play t h r o u g h t w i c e in its e n t i r e t y b e f o r e t h e y

a n d visible f r o m i n s i d e a n d o u t s i d e . A c l o s e - u p ,

g r a d u a t e . T h e M e d i a m e s h ÂŽ c u r t a i n , c r e a t e d by

high q u a l i t y LCD d i s p l a y o n t h e s e c o n d f l o o r

A 2 a M E D I A , is m a d e of linear t u b e s filled with

s h o w c a s e s t h e w e a v e r ' s facial f e a t u r e s , h a n d s

LED n o d e s (pixels f o r t h e l a r g e - f o r m a t display)

a n d t h e b a s k e t . Photos courtesy Narduli

Studio.

engineers, architects, and landscape architects.

H e r i n t e r a c t i v e Water Map p l a z a f o r t h e H. O .

S m i t h Botanic G a r d e n s at P e n n State w a s also c o m p l e t e d t h i s year. Photo by Vincent

Ahem.

In S e p t e m b e r , t h e H o u s t o n Arts A l l i a n c e

signaling p e o p l e as far away as d o w n t o w n

a n d t h e City of H o u s t o n S a b i n e W a t e r P u m p

that another person has doused themselves

Station c o m m i s s i o n e d artist M a t t h e w Geller

with a r e f r e s h i n g , a l b e i t brief, s h o w e r .

to create a p e r m a n e n t interactive s c u l p t u r e at

G e l l e r w a n t e d his u r b a n e a r t h w o r k t o

t h e W a t e r P u m p S t a t i o n . T h e r e s u l t is O P E N

c o n n e c t t h e station, park, and nearby skate

C H A N N E L FLOW. T h e P u m p S t a t i o n f e e l s like

park and d r a w attention to an u n d e r a p p r e c i -

an unexpected location for an artwork, but t h e

ated urban environment. H e also wanted a

p i e c e brilliantly plays o f f t h e r a w f u n c t i o n a l i t y

cooling station for park g o e r s and s k a t e r s o u t

of t h e P u m p S t a t i o n by s e n d i n g s p r a w l i n g , 60-

a n d a b o u t in H o u s t o n ' s s e a r i n g s u m m e r h e a t .

f o o t tall, s t e e l p i p e s b e y o n d t h e c o n f i n e s of t h e

"My i d e a , " G e l l e r s a y s , " w a s t h a t if it

s t a t i o n a n d i n t o t h e n e a r b y B u f f a l o Bayou Park.

t o o k s o m e e f f o r t t o g e t t h i s w a t e r , it m i g h t give

In a f u n t w i s t , G e l l e r ' s " e x t e n s i o n " w a t e r p i p e s

p e o p l e a g r e a t e r a p p r e c i a t i o n of t h e e a s e [with

have their own functionality. T h e pipe that

which] they just go h o m e a n d turn the t a p on."

r i s e s u p a n d o v e r i n t o B u f f a l o Bayou Park is a n o u t d o o r s h o w e r o p e r a t e d by a n o l d - f a s h i o n e d m a n u a l well p u m p . W h e n s o m e o n e p u s h e s d o w n the p u m p handle, water p o u r s out of the s h o w e r f r o m 25 f e e t a b o v e .

Simultaneously, a n d as a result of

B a s e d in N e w York City, G e l l e r h a s received fellowships f r o m t h e A m e r i c a n A c a d e m y in R o m e a n d t h e N a t i o n a l E n d o w m e n t f o r t h e Arts. H e is c u r r e n t l y w o r k i n g o n a design-build c o m m i s s i o n for the municipal c o u r t in A u s t i n , Texas, a n d a " P o c k e t - P a r k "

p u m p i n g water through the pipes, orange and

in C l e v e l a n d , O h i o . Learn m o r e by v i s i t i n g

b l u e twin b e a c o n s o n t o p of t h e s t r u c t u r e f l a s h ,

m a t t h e w g e l l e r . c o m . Photo by Diana

Kingsley.

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS — I

Artist M i c h a e l M e r c i l ' s n e w Battery Park City i n s t a l l a t i o n HALOS FOR NYC is i n t e r a c t i v e — with t h e s u n . T h e p r o j e c t , o n d i s p l a y for five m o n t h s in 2 0 0 9 , u s e d t h e s u n ' s m o v e m e n t t h r o u g h t h e sky t o i l l u m i n a t e w o r d s p a i n t e d o n t h e p a v e m e n t below. By u s i n g l a r g e m i r r o r s m o u n t e d to a nearby rooftop, t h e artist d i r e c t e d t h e l i g h t ' s m o v e m e n t d o w n t o w a r d six p a i r s of w o r d s ; e a c h p a i r is i l l u m i n a t e d a s t h e s u n c r o s s e s t h e sky. L o c a t e d a t t h e i n t e r s e c t i o n of M u r r a y S t r e e t a n d River T e r r a c e , t h e w o r d T h e L a w n d a l e Library in Los A n g e l e s ,

s e t s are: WATCH & SEE; SELF & S U N ; LEAP &

California, recently got a mid-century m o d e r n f a c e l i f t with t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n o f a 2 0 - f o o t - h i g h by 1 5 - f o o t - w i d e f l o o r - t o - c e i l i n g g l a s s a r t w o r k titled S U B D I V I S I O N S . D e s i g n e d by A n n e M a r i e Karlsen a n d f a b r i c a t e d in 2 0 0 8 by F r a n z M a y e r

S H O U T ; TABLE & B O O K ; KISS & TELL; OVER &. OUT. Mercil w a s i n s p i r e d by " T h e S u n d o w n P o e m " by Walt W h i t m a n . T h e w o r d p a i r i n g s c o m e f r o m a variety of s o u r c e s , i n c l u d i n g old S h a k e r t e x t s . Photo by Michael

Mercil.

of M u n i c h , G e r m a n y , t h e a r t w o r k f e a t u r e s a s e r i e s of e i g h t r e p e a t e d g e o m e t r i c p a t t e r n s , i n s p i r e d by r e c o n f i g u r a t i o n s of h i s t o r i c a l p h o t o g r a p h s significant to the neighborhood a r o u n d t h e library. Karlsen w o r k e d with t h e Lawndale Historical Society to research t h e p h o t o g r a p h s used as inspiration for the a r t w o r k . T h e p i e c e c a n b e s e e n b o t h in a n d o u t s i d e the 1 7,000-square-foot building. During t h e day, light s t r e a m s t h r o u g h t h e g l a s s a n d a d d s a brilliant b e a u t y t o t h e s p a c e . O u t s i d e , the glass c o m p r i s e s part of t h e building's f a c a d e . "From a d i s t a n c e , " t h e artist notes, "the images b e c o m e vibrant abstract patterns... u p c l o s e t h e i m a g e s a r e r e a d a b l e , like a h i s t o r y b o o k . " Karlsen w a s i n s p i r e d by p a i n t e r Piet M o n d r i a n a n d his g e o m e t r i c p a t t e r n s a n d g r i d s . Photos by Anne Marie

Karlsen.

Ready t o c a m p o u t in P h i l a d e l p h i a ? G I M M E SHELTER, a p r o j e c t of t h e Schuylkill C e n t e r for Environmental Education, a 350-acre nature

N e w York City's partially c o m p l e t e d H i g h

p r e s e r v e in t h e R o x b o r o u g h n e i g h b o r h o o d

Line Park, utilizing a f o r m e r e l e v a t e d rail line

of Philly, f e a t u r e s six t e m p o r a r y , f u n c t i o n a l

o n M a n h a t t a n ' s W e s t Side, n o w h a s its first

w o o d l a n d s h e l t e r s — a n d the public can m a k e

l a r g e - s c a l e , p e r m a n e n t p u b l i c art p r o j e c t .

one-night reservations! The residences are

S p e n c e r F i n c h ' s s i t e - s p e c i f i c g l a s s art, e n t i t l e d

m e a n t to raise t h e public's a w a r e n e s s a b o u t

T H E RIVER T H A T FLOWS B O T H WAYS, w a s

sustainability and the impact h u m a n s have on

i n s t a l l e d last s p r i n g in t h e s e m i - e n c l o s u r e

the natural world. The shelters were d e s i g n e d

a r o u n d a f o r m e r l o a d i n g d o c k . Utilizing 7 0 0

by c o m p e t i t i o n . O v e r 8 0 a r c h i t e c t s , a r t i s t s , a n d

i n d i v i d u a l p a n e s of g l a s s , e a c h c o l o r e d t o

d e s i g n e r s f r o m a c r o s s t h e world s u b m i t t e d

r e p r e s e n t h u e s of light r e f l e c t e d off t h e

e n t r i e s , a n d 12 s e m i f i n a l i s t s w e r e c h o s e n , with

H u d s o n River, Finch s o u g h t t o c o n n e c t t h e

t h e six w i n n i n g d e s i g n s c h o s e n f r o m t h o s e 12.

p i e c e t o its s u r r o u n d i n g s . To a c h i e v e t h e a f f e c t ,

Each d e s i g n f e a t u r e s e l e m e n t s of s u s t a i n a b i l -

h e p h o t o g r a p h e d t h e H u d s o n River 7 0 0 t i m e s

i t y — o n e s h e l t e r is m a d e e n t i r e l y of b a m b o o

f r o m the deck of a boat and then m a t c h e d

f r o m a local g r o w e r — a n d p r o m o t e s n e w

e a c h p h o t o t o a s p e c i f i c p a n e l . T h e title The

and inspiring green a p p r o a c h e s to building

River That Flows Both Ways c o m e s f r o m t h e

t e c h n i q u e s . W h e n it's r a i n i n g , Rainshelter,

original Native American word for t h e H u d s o n

Gabriela Sanz Rodriguez and Carlos Martinez

River, Muhheakantuck.

T h e p r o j e c t is p a r t o f

t h e H i g h Line Art p r o g r a m a n d is p r e s e n t e d in

by

M e d i e r o , of M a d r i d , S p a i n , c h a n g e s i n t o a f o u n t a i n a n d a rain c o n c e r t plays. M a d e f r o m

p a r t n e r s h i p with C r e a t i v e T i m e a n d t h e N e w

p o s t - c o n s u m e r recycled m a t e r i a l s , s u c h O S B

York City D e p a r t m e n t of P a r k s a n d R e c r e a t i o n .

p a n e l s , its g e o m e t r i c s i m p l i c i t y is r e v e a l e d

Photo by David B. Smith, courtesy Creative

i n s i d e . Photo o / R a i n s h e l t e r by Jack

Time.

Ramsdale.

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

T h e a r t i s t i c t e a m OS G E M E O S , c o m p o s e d of t w o Brazilian b r o t h e r s , O t a v i o a n d G u s t a v o P a n d o l f o , h a v e c o m p l e t e d t h e i r first p u b l i c a r t w o r k in M a n h a t t a n o n t h e c o r n e r o f H o u s t o n a n d Bowery. T h e w o r k is a m u r a l d o n e in s p r a y p a i n t o n c o n c r e t e , graffiti-style, In J u n e , t h e city of B u r i e n , W a s h i n g t o n cel-

a n d it r u n s 1 7 f e e t h i g h a n d 51 f e e t l o n g . T h e

e b r a t e d t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n of HELIOS PAVILION

b r o t h e r s ' p a i n t i n g t e c h n i q u e is d e v i l i s h l y

by s c u l p t o r J a m e s M. H a r r i s o n . Helios

Pavilion

precise a n d at o n c e b u o y a n t a n d s a d , o p u l e n t

is 3 0 f e e t tall a n d 16 f e e t in d i a m e t e r a n d m a d e

a n d p l a i n . T h e m u r a l will b e o n t h e c o r n e r a t

of p a i n t e d s t e e l , l a m i n a t e d art g l a s s , a n d r e s i n .

least t h r o u g h March 2010.

Its s h a p e is r e m i n i s c e n t o f t h e s t r u c t u r a l s u p p o r t s i n s i d e a t o w e r , a n d t h e p i e c e is c r o w n e d

O s G e m e o s , w h i c h is P o r t u g u e s e f o r " t h e twins," are identical twin b r o t h e r s f r o m S a o

with a red g l a s s p l a n e with a n o p e n s p a c e in

P a o l o . T h e y a r e graffiti a r t i s t s w h o s e c h a r a c t e r s

t h e m i d d l e t h a t f r a m e s a p o r t i o n of t h e sky. An

h a v e a n u r b a n d r e a m l i k e quality. T h e i r w o r k

a r r o w n e a r t h e t o p of t h e " t o w e r " s y m b o l i c a l l y

seamlessly b l e n d s folklore a n d fantasy,

c o n n e c t s Mt. Rainer, t h e city of Burien, a n d t h e

h o p - o p a n d p i x a c a o , a n d it h a s a n i n t r i c a c y

old B e r i n g land b r i d g e , t h e m i g r a t i o n r o u t e t o

a n d d e l i c a c y o f t e n r e s e r v e d only f o r h i g h

t h e A m e r i c a s . F r o m i n s i d e , with t h e s u n o v e r -

a r t . R o b e r t a S m i t h , w r i t i n g in The New York

head, the piece e n c o u r a g e s viewers to m u s e

Times ( A u g u s t 3, 2 0 0 9 ) , d e s c r i b e d t h e t w i n s

on the h e a v e n s as they are metaphorically

a s b r i n g i n g "graffiti art t o its R o c o c o p h a s e "

s u r r o u n d e d by t h e w o v e n c u l t u r a l h i s t o r y of t h e

a n d called t h e m u r a l "a d r e a m of h a p p i n e s s

p a s t . T h e city c o m m i s s i o n e d t h e s c u l p t u r e a n d

with an underlying chord of melancholy. And

d e d i c a t e d it " t o t h e i n d o m i t a b l e a n d g e n e r o u s

e v e r y t h i n g in it is e x q u i s i t e l y

spirit of t h e D u w a m i s h p e o p l e , t h e i n d i g e n o u s

d e t a i l e d , a d a z z l e m e n t of e f f o r t l e s s t e c h n i q u e

p e o p l e of t h i s r e g i o n , a n d [it] is m e a n t f o r t h e

that s u s t a i n s long b o u t s of close looking."

e n j o y m e n t of all." Photo by the artist.

Photos by Ken Coebel.

fine-tuned

and

Cliff G a r t e n S t u d i o s of Los A n g e l e s r e c e n t l y c o m p l e t e d a m o n u m e n t a l p u b l i c a r t w o r k in Fort W o r t h , Texas. AVENUE O F L I G H T is a s e r i e s o f six s o a r i n g s t a i n l e s s s t e e l s c u l p t u r e s standing on the median along Lancaster Avenue. T h e row of s c u l p t u r e s f u n c t i o n s as a g r a n d g a t e w a y t o t h e city a n d h e l p s s h a p e a s t r o n g , positive identity for t h e Lancaster n e i g h b o r h o o d . E a c h s c u l p t u r e r i s e s 36 f e e t above the streetscape and rests on a concrete p e d e s t a l s u r r o u n d e d by n a t i v e p l a n t s . As o n e ' s viewing angle c h a n g e s , t h e s t r u c t u r e s m o r p h f r o m t r a n s p a r e n t t o o p a q u e , t h e i r art d e c o styling e v o k i n g t h e a r c h i t e c t u r a l d e t a i l s of t h e n e a r b y Texas & Pacific T e r m i n a l . Cliff Garten Studios w o n the c o m m i s s i o n after a national invitational c o m p e t i t i o n . G a r t e n ' s d r e a m w a s t o " m a k e s c u l p t u r e a t t h e s c a l e of t h e city, e m b r a c i n g its i n f r a s t r u c t u r e a s s o m e thing with great a e s t h e t i c potential."

Photos by Kevin

Buchanan.

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS TECH AROUND THE WORLD

cumted by Steve Dietz

"Let there be LED!" might be the new mantra of artists, architects, and lighting designers working together around the globe. Here's a small sampling of interactive and inspiring projects unveiled recently.

T h e 2 0 0 9 D A N I S H N A T I O N A L RADIO C O N C E R T HALL in C o p e n h a g e n , d e s i g n e d by t h e f a m o u s F r e n c h a r c h i t e c t Jean N o u v e l , f o r m s a n o u t s t a n d i n g a n d i n n o v a t i v e architectural complex. The complex contains four c o n c e r t halls in t o t a l . T h e l a r g e s t hall s e a t s 1,800, f l o a t i n g like a m e t e o r a b o v e t h e t h r e e smaller halls—a structure rendered possible only by t h e m o s t a d v a n c e d c o m p u t e r t e c h n o l ogy. C o n c r e t e p r o c e s s e d in new, r e f i n e d w a y s , surprising color c o m b i n a t i o n s , and exceptional s p a t i a l i t y a r e j u s t a f e w o f t h e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of N o u v e l ' s w o r k of art. A n d s o , of c o u r s e , is t h e blue, s e m i t r a n s p a r e n t screen t h a t covers t h e e x t e r i o r o f t h e b u i l d i n g , with i m a g e s p r o j e c t e d o n t o t h e s u r f a c e . Text by Photo by Carsten 100

T h e i n s t a l l a t i o n c r e a t e d in 2 0 0 9 by M O M E N T

s p a c e b e t w e e n an interior a n d exterior as

FACTORY f o r La Vitrine C u l t u r e l l e is p a r t o f

well a s a p u b l i c p a s s a g e p l a c e , t h e wall u s e s

z

a set of u r b a n p r o j e c t s a i m e d at revitalizing

tracking devices to c r e a t e different visual

3

a cultural area of d o w n t o w n Montreal that

a n i m a t i o n s b a s e d precisely on t h e p r e s e n c e

P

has now b e c o m e known as the Quartier des

a n d m o v e m e n t of p e o p l e in t h e s u r r o u n d i n g

5

S p e c t a c l e s . It is in t h i s c o n t e x t t h a t M o m e n t

s p a c e . I n q u i s i t i v e p e r s o n s w h o walk t h r o u g h

»

Factory, a M o n t r e a l g r o u p o f d e s i g n e r s

t h e c o r r i d o r a d j a c e n t t o t h e wall t r i g g e r

in

s p e c i a l i z i n g in l a r g e - s c a l e m u l t i m e d i a

l u m i n o u s a n i m a t i o n s (stars, revolving d o o r s ,

environments and performances, developed

disks, arrows) which follow t h e p e d e s t r i a n s '

5

a p e r m a n e n t i n t e r a c t i v e LED wall l o c a t e d

m o v e m e n t a s t h e y g e t c l o s e r o r walk by,

3

u n d e r a m a r q u e e o f t h e P l a c e d e s Arts, in a

w h i l e p a s s e r s b y a little f u r t h e r o f f a r e

£

s p a c e similar to a display w i n d o w situated

a m u s e d as they watch this p e r f o r m a n c e .

«

a r o u n d a n e n t r a n c e d o o r . As a n i n t e r m e d i a r y

.

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Machholdt.

T H E R U N D L E LANTERN in A d e l a i d e ' s c e n t r a l

.in" ..in"' M.

"Mr iinii, *

b u s i n e s s d i s t r i c t e c h o e s t h e a m b i e n c e o f early experimental c o m p u t e r artworks. Not a media f a c a d e d e s i g n e d f o r c o m p l e x c o n t e n t , t h i s fluid u r b a n light s c u l p t u r e is b e s t g l i m p s e d w h i l e s h o p p i n g , on t h e way to the movies, or having d i n n e r o r d r i n k s with f r i e n d s . W r a p p e d a r o u n d a multistory corner concrete parking garage,

At n i g h t , in t h e p e r i p h e r y of t h e V i e n n e s e

t h a t M a d e r , Stublic, a n d W i e r m a n n g a v e

t h e L E D - i l l u m i n a t e d a l u m i n u m s t r u c t u r e is

city c e n t e r , t h e D a n u b e C a n a l r e f l e c t s t h e

to the impressive and, to date, p e r m a n e n t

c o m p o s e d of 2 , 4 5 4 "pixels," e a c h t h r e e f e e t

lights o f t h e U N I Q A TOWER, a 2 5 0 - f o o t high

i n t e r v e n t i o n o n t h e U N I Q A Tower. T h e

s q u a r e , a n d w a s built in 2 0 0 8 at a c o s t of AU

b u i l d i n g d e s i g n e d by t h e a r c h i t e c t H e i n z

s i t e - s p e c i f i c v i d e o i n s t a l l a t i o n is in line with

$ 2 million. S o f a r t h e Lantern h a s p r i m a r i l y

N e u m a n n . O n t h e f a c a d e , m e a s u r i n g nearly

t h e architecture of t h e building, since

c e l e b r a t e d city v i b r a n c y with a b s t r a c t c o l o r

2 3 , 0 0 0 s q u a r e f e e t , b e t w e e n t h e w i n d o w s , is

c o n t i n u o u s l y c h a n g i n g p o i n t s , lines, a n d

m o v e m e n t . W i t h a r e s o l u t i o n of 34 x 21 pixels,

a grid of 1 6 0 , 0 0 0 LEDs. Pixels c a n b e s e l e c t e d

p l a n e s f o l l o w t h e c u r v a t u r e of t h e c o n s t r u c -

it is p e r f e c t l y s u i t e d t o lo-fi, c o m p r e s s e d , a n d

individually, e n a b l i n g t h e r e a l i z a t i o n of v i d e o

t i o n . After a c o u p l e of m i n u t e s , t h i s e l e g a n t ,

a m b i g u o u s works. The silent lantern o p e r a t e s

p r o j e c t s . In c o o p e r a t i o n with t h e B e r l i n - b a s e d

e v e n c o n c e p t u a l idea is a b a n d o n e d in f a v o r

e a c h n i g h t a f t e r d u s k , with its b e s t v a n t a g e

artists Holger Mader, Alexander Stublic,

of a d y n a m i c s e q u e n c e o f p o s s i b l e f u r t h e r

p o i n t l o c a t e d in t h e m i d d l e of a b u s y traffic

and Heike W i e r m a n n , t h e lighting d e s i g n

a r c h i t e c t o n i c a l b l u e p r i n t s , in o r d e r t o b r i n g

i n t e r s e c t i o n . I like t o t h i n k t h i s is a t i m e l y

o f f i c e Licht K u n s t Licht h a s c o n c e i v e d t h e

t h e b u i l d i n g i n t o a c t i o n a n d finally let it

reminder that e n g a g i n g public screen c o n t e n t

video f a c a d e p r o g r a m (technical realization:

t u m b l e d o w n . Text by Sandro

c o u l d i n d e e d b e d a n g e r o u s . Text by

Barco, B e l g i u m ) . Twists and Turns is t h e n a m e

Photos © 2007, by Hervi

Droschl.

Massard.

Rackham.

Photo courtesy

Melinda

fusion.com.au.

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

F a c a d e s h a v e a l w a y s b e e n tricky. M o d e r n

a b i t m a p p e d w e a v e o f light in f r o n t of a p l a i n

s e n s i b i l i t y still h o l d s t h a t o u r e x p r e s s i o n of

a n d o r d i n a r y a r c h i t e c t u r a l m a s s , g i v i n g it a n

architectural form should have s o m e bearing

u n d e n i a b l e s c h i z o p h r e n i c c h a r a c t e r . By d a y

t o its e s s e n c e , e v e n if, in t h e o r y , h a v i n g l e a r n e d

it is a plain pixilated c h a i n - m a i l m e s h , b u t by

f r o m Las V e g a s , t h e p o s t m o d e r n s u b v e r s i o n

n i g h t it is t r a n s f o r m e d by r h y t h m i c p u l s e s o f

of m e t a p h o r c a u s e d a c o l l a p s e of t h e i m a g e

light, effectively n e g a t i n g t h e r e l e v a n c e of its

a n d its s u b j e c t . S i n g a p o r e ' s CRYSTAL M E S H

f o r m and function, which are d r o w n e d out

(ILUMA), c o m p l e t e d in 2 0 0 9 by t h e Berlin-

by t h e i n s i s t e n t visuality o f t h e f a c a d e . T h e

based studio realities:united takes us a step

a r c h i t e c t u r e is all m e d i u m with little m e s s a g e

c l o s e r t o t h i s d i v o r c e o f t h e s i g n f r o m its

save for t h e hypnotic and i n s t a n t a n e o u s , albeit

d o u b l e . Part of t h e city's U r b a n E n t e r t a i n m e n t

fleeting,

Center, t h e skin of t h e l l u m a b u i l d i n g is a

Text by Peter Chen. Photos by Jan Edler, courtesy

g r a n u l a t e d light a n d m e d i a f a c a d e t h a t t h r o w s

www.realities-united.de.

sensory stimulation on the retina.

Built in 2 0 0 8 a s a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t p h o t o v o l t a i c s u r f a c e i n t e g r a t e d i n t o a g l a s s c u r t a i n wall, t h e G r e e n P I X Z E R O ENERGY M E D I A WALL in Beijing is a g a r g a n t u a n LED d i s p l a y c o m p r i s e d of 2 , 2 9 2 c o l o r light p o i n t s , c o m p a r a b l e t o a 2 4 , 0 0 0 - s q u a r e - f o o t m o n i t o r s c r e e n . It w a s c o n c e i v e d by S i m o n e G i o s t r a & P a r t n e r s Architects as a platform dedicated to dynamic c o n t e n t display and to site-specific e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n . T h e M e d i a Wall u s e s s o l a r energy gleaned d u r i n g t h e day to power the d i s p l a y a t n i g h t , m a k i n g it a s u s t a i n a b l e alternative for large-scale, new m e d i a p r e s e n t a t i o n s . T h e r e is a c e r t a i n l o n g - t e r m unpredictability, however, a b o u t t h e project's artistic goals. T h e o p e n i n g p r o g r a m (organized by t h e a u t h o r ) f e a t u r e d s e l e c t v i d e o files by p i o n e e r i n g a r t i s t s s u c h a s A a a j i a o (Xu Wenkai), Takeshi Murata, Shih Chieh H u a n g , a n d M i c h a e l S m i t h , b u t t h e wall e n v e l o p e s a T h e V a r u s Battle of 9 A.D. w a s f o u g h t b e t w e e n

d r u m s with w a t e r - j e t - c u t i m a g e s ( o n e o f

the Roman Empire and Germanic soldiers w h o

R o m a n soldiers a n d o n e of spears) are

a m b u s h e d and destroyed three Roman legions,

illuminated f r o m within and rotate, projecting

a d e f e a t which initiated t h e R o m a n E m p i r e ' s

a n e n d l e s s c o l l i s i o n of s p e a r s a n d t h e s o l d i e r ' s

r e t r e a t f r o m N o r t h G e r m a n y . Two t h o u s a n d

silhouettes. Resembling a t r a n s p o s e d zoe-

y e a r s later, a r t i s t D e n n i s O p p e n h e i m r e c r e a t e d

tropeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an object w h o s e n a m e can m e a n the

t h i s s u r p r i s e a t t a c k at t h e m a i n t r a i n s t a t i o n in

" w h e e l o f l i f e " â&#x20AC;&#x201D; B a t t l e Drums c o u l d b e v i e w e d

O s n a b r u c k , G e r m a n y . O p p e n h e i m ' s BATTLE

as the "wheel of d e a t h , " e m p h a s i z i n g w h a t

D R U M S visually p o r t r a y s t h e t h o u s a n d s o f

O p p e n h e i m refers to as the universal o u t c o m e

s p e a r s t h a t fell d o w n a r o u n d t h e R o m a n

of all w a r s . M o r e a b o u t t h e a r t i s t a t www.

soldiers, trapping t h e m and causing m a s s

d e n n i s - o p p e n h e i m . c o m . Text by Sarah

c o n f u s i o n . S t a n d i n g 8.5 f e e t tall, t w o s t e e l

Photo by Christian

Crovermann.

Nesbit.

s e a f o o d restaurant and e n t e r t a i n m e n t center, a n d t h e client could at any m i n u t e d e c i d e t o u s e t h e skin f o r c o m m e r c i a l a d v e r t i s i n g p u r p o s e s in o r d e r t o g e n e r a t e a d d i t i o n a l i n c o m e . Even a s a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t display, t h e q u e s t i o n of h o w m u c h t h e c u r r e n t l y highly c o m m e r c i a l u s e of o u t d o o r s c r e e n s c a n b e b r o a d e n e d with cultural a n d artistic c o n t e n t r e m a i n s a n u n k n o w n . S e e v i d e o s of t h e wall a n d m o r e i m a g e s at www.greenpix.org.

Text by Defne Ayas. Photos courtesy and Simon Giostra

Architects.

GreenPIX

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

T r a f a l g a r S q u a r e in c e n t r a l L o n d o n is e n c l o s e d

t h e plinth twenty-four h o u r s a d a y — w h a t they

by f o u r l a r g e p l i n t h s , e a c h o n e s e r v i n g a s t h e

d i d w h i l e t h e y w e r e t h e r e w a s u p t o t h e m . They

b a s e f o r a s t a t u e — w i t h t h e e x c e p t i o n of t h e

could p e r f o r m , s t a n d on their head, sing, or

o n e in t h e n o r t h w e s t c o r n e r . T h a t p l i n t h , built

s i m p l y s t a n d i m m o b i l e ( t h e only c a v e a t w a s t h e

in 1 8 4 1 , w a s i n t e n d e d t o h o u s e a n e q u e s t r i a n

activity h a d t o b e legal). A n y o n e o v e r t h e a g e

sculpture, but t h e work w a s never placed there.

of 16 w h o w a s living o r s t a y i n g in Britain c o u l d

Since t h e n , t h e plinth h a s h o s t e d a rotating

volunteer to take part. Volunteers were c h o s e n

cast of different c o m m i s s i o n e d works, m a n y

a t r a n d o m f r o m all e n t r a n t s .

o f w h i c h h a v e b e e n f e a t u r e d in p r e v i o u s i s s u e s o f PAR. For 1 0 0 c o n s e c u t i v e d a y s , f r o m July 6

T h e first 6 1 5 p a r t i c i p a n t s w e r e c h o sen r a n d o m l y f r o m 14,500 applicants. They i n c l u d e d a n a q u a t i c s c i e n t i s t , w h o d r e s s e d in a

t o O c t o b e r 14, 2 0 0 9 , t h e p l i n t h w a s h o m e t o

" p o o c o s t u m e , " a cyclist w h o u s e d p e d a l p o w e r

s c u l p t o r A n t o n y G o r m l e y ' s i n t e r a c t i v e installa-

t o light u p his specially c r e a t e d s u i t , a n d a n

t i o n O N E & O T H E R . W h i l e m o s t of his w o r k s

8 3 year-old g e n t l e m a n a r m e d with s e m a p h o r e

h a v e f o c u s e d o n t h e f o r m o f his o w n body,

f l a g s . You c a n f o l l o w t h e p a r a d e of p a r t i c i p a n t s ,

G o r m l e y a s k e d t h e p e o p l e o f L o n d o n t o become

a r c h i v e d at w w w . o n e a n d o t h e r . c o . u k .

the artwork. Gormley had volunteers stand on

Photo courtesy

SkyArts.

J o h a n n e s b u r g , S o u t h Africa, is g e t t i n g its very o w n S t a t u e of L i b e r t y — i n t h e f o r m of a s c u l p t u r e o f a l i b e r a t e d w o m a n with a

Artist S h a n S h a n S h e n g ' s i n s t a l l a t i o n O P E N

fire b r a z i e r o n h e r h e a d . T H E FIREWALKER

WALL PROJECT a t t h e 2 0 0 9 Venice B i e n n a l e

is a 1 0 - m e t e r - t a l l s c u l p t u r e l o c a t e d n e a r

r e i m a g i n e s t h e G r e a t Wall of C h i n a in 2 , 2 0 0

Q u e e n E l i z a b e t h Bridge. At t h i s site, f e m a l e

g l a s s bricks e n g r a v e d with a d a t e ( t h e r e is

e n t r e p r e n e u r s m a k e a b u s i n e s s out of cooking

o n e brick f o r every year it t o o k t o build t h e

a n d s e l l i n g mielies ( c o r n o n t h e c o b ) , a n d

wall) a n d t h e c o r r e s p o n d i n g C h i n e s e l u n a r

smiteys ( c o o k e d s h e e p h e a d s ) , t o p e d e s t r i a n s

year. T h e g l a s s b r i c k s a r e t h e s a m e s i z e a s t h e

a n d taxi c o m m u t e r s . T h e s c u l p t u r e c e l e b r a t e s

b r i c k s u s e d t o c o n s t r u c t t h e G r e a t Wall. T h e

t h e e v e r y d a y n a t u r e of t h e activity, a n d it

i n s t a l l a t i o n is l o c a t e d a l o n g t h e p i c t u r e s q u e

c o m m e n t s o n t h e creativity a n d i n g e n u i t y o f

Grand Canal.

survival. T h e s c u l p t u r e is built o f t h r e e layers o f s t e e l s h e e t i n g , w e l d e d t o g e t h e r . It is l o c a t e d at a s i t e c u r r e n t l y u s e d a s a c a r w a s h f o r taxis.

S h a n S h a n S h e n g w a s b o r n in S h a n g h a i b u t t o d a y lives a n d w o r k s in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s .

S h e is f a s c i n a t e d with a r c h i t e c t u r e , m a t e r i a l , m e m o r y , a n d h e r m o t h e r l a n d , a n d t h e wall is

T h e s t a t u e is t h e j o i n t c r e a t i o n o f t w o a r t i s t s . G e r h a r d Marx h a i l s f r o m C a p e Town,

s a i d t o e v o k e t h e o p e n i n g u p of C h i n a in t h e g l o b a l e c o n o m y , m a k i n g way f o r n e w t r a d e

S o u t h Africa, a n d h e is a d i r e c t o r , s e t d e s i g n e r ,

r o u t e s (it u s e d t o b e s p i c e s ; t o d a y it is t h e

v i d e o a n i m a t o r , a n d a r t i s t . William K e n t r i d g e ,

e x c h a n g e of i d e a s ) a n d t h e i n c r e a s i n g t r a n s p a r -

a n a t i v e o f J o h a n n e s b u r g , is a n i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y

e n c y of life in C h i n a .

k n o w n a r t i s t b e s t k n o w n f o r his a n i m a t e d films;

The Firewalker,

K e n t r i d g e ' s first m a j o r

o u t d o o r s c u l p t u r e , is m a d e t o look like b i t s

After t h e B i e n n a l e , t h e Open Wall will travel t h r o u g h Asia. Part o f its a p p e a l a n d m e s s a g e is in its c o n s t a n t d e c o n s t r u c t i o n

of torn paper put together which, f r o m a

and recreation—that process, during which

d i s t a n c e , c o a l e s c e a s t h e i m a g e of t h e w o m a n

the bricks can be redistributed, m o v e d , a n d

walking down the street. The abstracted form

c h a n g e d , is m e a n t t o parallel t h e e v e r - s h i f t i n g

g i v e s t h e p i e c e a n a n i m a t e d quality, m u c h like

a n d c h a n g i n g w o r l d of g l o b a l i z a t i o n .

K e n t r i d g e ' s films. Photo by John

Photos by Marcel

Hodgkiss.

Lam.

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

O v e r the p a s t d e c a d e , Australian artist Andrew R o g e r s h a s p r o d u c e d s o m e of t h e l a r g e s t land art in t h e w o r l d , in p l a c e s a s d i s p a r a t e a s C h i n a , India, N e p a l , Sri Lanka, Israel, Slovakia, I c e l a n d , Chile, Bolivia, t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , a n d A u s t r a l i a . In 2 0 0 9 , a f t e r t w o y e a r s of n o n s t o p w o r k , h e c o m p l e t e d Time and Space, a v a s t s e r i e s of e i g h t e a r t h w o r k s a n d s t r u c t u r e s e n c o m p a s s i n g t w o s q u a r e m i l e s in C a p p a d o c i a , T u r k e y â&#x20AC;&#x201D; t h e l a r g e s t land art park in t h e w o r l d .

A m o n g t h e h i g h l i g h t s is G R I N D , a n e l e g a n t 330- by 3 3 0 - f o o t line d r a w i n g t h a t a l l u d e s t o local a n c i e n t history.

Wherever he works, Rogers employs h u n d r e d s of locals. R o g e r s ' p e n c h a n t f o r e q u a l ity a m o n g his crew, i n c l u d i n g M u s l i m s , K u r d s , Turks, A r m e n i a n s , a n d G y p s i e s , a n d his insis-

Artist David R o k e b y ' s n e w w o r k , L O N G WAVE,

a n d a s v i e w e r s walk u n d e r n e a t h t h e s p h e r e s

t e n c e t h a t m e n a n d w o m e n receive e q u a l pay,

w a s i n s t a l l e d a t B r o o k e f i e l d P l a c e in T o r o n t o ' s

they are r e m i n d e d of t h e d e g r e e to which

c a u s e d f r i c t i o n for m a n y , a n d o u t r a g e a m o n g a

financial district f r o m June 5-20 as part of t h e

modern-day communication devices and forms

f e w â&#x20AC;&#x201D; i n Turkey, s o m e m e n w a l k e d o f f t h e j o b .

city's Luminato

have b e c o m e omnipresent, m o n u m e n t a l ,

Communication/Environment

a r t s e v e n t . T h e p i e c e c o n s i s t s of 64 b r i g h t

a n d i n e s c a p a b l e . A native of C a n a d a , Rokeby

p r i s e d of 96 l a r g e - s c a l e p h o t o g r a p h s ( m a n y of

red s p h e r e s s u s p e n d e d f r o m t h e c e i l i n g in

s p e c i a l i z e s in e l e c t r o n i c a n d v i d e o i n s t a l l a t i o n

t h e m f r o m specifically c o m m i s s i o n e d satell-

t h e s h a p e of a s i n e w a v e ( t h e s i n e w a v e is t h e

art. H i s early w o r k Very Nervous System, w h i c h

ites), R o g e r s ' w o r k is t h e s u b j e c t of a n e w

b a s i c s t r u c t u r e of w i r e l e s s c o m m u n i c a t i o n ) .

a p p e a r e d a t t h e V e n i c e B i e n n a l e in 1 9 8 6 , is

b o o k , a u t h o r e d by E l e a n o r H e a r t n e y .

As s u c h , t h e e x u b e r a n t red s p h e r e s b r i n g

a c k n o w l e d g e d a s a p i o n e e r i n g p i e c e in t h e

Photo courtesy the artist.

physical s h a p e a n d s p a c e t o m o d e r n s o u n d ,

w o r l d o f i n t e r a c t i v e art. Photo courtesy the

In a d d i t i o n t o a m a j o r e x h i b i t i o n c o m -

In May, a r t i s t P e t e r Coffin s e n t a U F O

artist.

flying

o v e r C o p a c a b a n a b e a c h in Rio d e J a n e i r o .

T h i s w a s t h e s p a c e c r a f t ' s s e c o n d flight, only t h i s t i m e with s o u p e d - u p p o l i c e l i g h t s f o r e v e n g r e a t e r v i s u a l i m p a c t . ( T h e c r a f t ' s first flight w a s o v e r t h e Baltic S e a a n d t h e c o a s t of G d a n s k , P o l a n d o n July 4, 2 0 0 8 . ) T h e s p a c e c r a f t is s e v e n m e t e r s in d i a m e t e r a n d m a d e of u l t r a l i g h t a l u m i n u m , w i t h l i g h t s c o v e r i n g t h e s u r f a c e o f t h e c r a f t . A six k i l o w a t t g e n e r a t o r provides p o w e r to t h e lights and a c o m p u t e r c o n t r o l s t h e light p a t t e r n s . S o m e o f t h e light p a t t e r n s c a n a l s o b e c o n t r o l l e d by r e m o t e . T h e c r a f t is s u s p e n d e d u n d e r a helicopter 20 m e t e r s above; the c h o p p e r r e m a i n s d a r k s o it c a n n o t b e s e e n a g a i n s t t h e n i g h t sky d u r i n g t h e p e r f o r m a n c e .

It t o o k 10 d a y s of o n - t h e - g r o u n d p r e p a r a t i o n in Rio t o l a u n c h t h e s p a c e c r a f t , a n d its flight w a s m e t with t h r o n g s o f p e o p l e a n d a s i z z l e of c a m e r a

flashes.

An e s t i m a t e d 5 0 0 , 0 0 0

people gathered along the Southeast coast of Brazil t o w i t n e s s t h e flight. P e t e r C o f f i n , n e p h e w of a r t i s t R o b e r t S m i t h s o n , is a n a r t i s t b a s e d in N e w York. Photo by Michal

Szlaga.

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

T h e a r t i s t i c d u o L o u i s e B e r t e l s e n a n d Po S h u W a n g h a v e built a s i n g i n g b r i d g e in D r a m m e n , Norway, e n t i t l e d RIVER HARP: A S O N G FOR N 0 K K E N . Built in 2 0 0 8 , t h e b r i d g e is a c a b l e s t a y e d p e d e s t r i a n b r i d g e , n a m e d Ypsilon, with t h r e e e m b e d d e d a c c e l e r o m e t e r s e n s o r s that m o n i t o r m o v e m e n t on the bridge. The s i g n a l g e n e r a t e d by t h e d y n a m i c m o v e m e n t o n t h e b r i d g e is s t r e a m e d t o t w o o r b - s h a p e d r e s o n a t o r s o n e a c h s i d e of t h e river, w h e r e it is p r o c e s s e d i n t o a n e l e c t r o n i c c h o i r s i n g i n g t o t h e river; t h e a r t i s t s a p p l i e d t h e t o n a l r a t i o p r o g r e s s i o n of a n old N o r w e g i a n folk s o n g .

In folk t r a d i t i o n , N a k k e n w a s a m i s c h i e v o u s g o d w h o lured p a s s e r s b y t o d e a t h by d r o w n i n g . Y p s i l o n ' s s o n g s , c r e a t e d E v e r y t h i n g w a s t u r n e d i n s i d e - o u t at t h e

f r o m m o d e r n - d a y passersby, are m e a n t to

N e w a r k e P o i n t S t u d e n t H a l l s in Leicester,

mollify N a k k e n a n d r e e s t a b l i s h h a r m o n y with

E n g l a n d last M a r c h with t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n of

t h e p o w e r f u l g o d . T h e a r t i s t ran a c a b l e a c r o s s

Michael Pinsky's T H E U N K N O W N STUDENT.

t h e h a n d r a i l of t h e b r i d g e , with e a c h e n d o f

Pinsky, w h o s e p e r s o n a l a r t i s t i c p a s s i o n is

the cable dipping into the water below and a

a r c h i t e c t u r a l s p a c e s a n d t h e p a s s a g e of t i m e ,

g a p in t h e c a b l e in t h e m i d d l e of t h e b r i d g e .

c r e a t e d a s e r i e s of g l o w i n g n e o n d e p i c t i o n s

W h e n bridge crossers put a hand on each

of s t u d e n t s ' r o o m s (which w e r e c h o s e n at

s i d e of t h e g a p in t h e c a b l e , t h e y c o m p l e t e

r a n d o m ) o n t h e o u t s i d e o f t h e s t u d e n t halls.

t h e s o u n d circuit a n d a r e a b l e t o h e a r t h e

The p r o c e s s m a k e s the personal public and

m o l e c u l a r f l o w of w a t e r b e n e a t h t h e m ( t h e

emphasizes the nonacademic lessons that new

s o u n d of N a k k e n ) , a n d N a k k e n c a n h e a r

college s t u d e n t s m u s t learn: h o w to survive o n

t h e m . T h e s o u n d p r o d u c e d by t h e p r o j e c t

their o w n away f r o m h o m e . While t h e percep-

is h a u n t i n g a n d g o n g - l i k e .

t i o n of c o l l e g e is t h a t it is a t i m e o f r i g o r o u s

For t h e p a s t n i n e y e a r s , B e r t e l s e n a n d

academic lessons, the d o m e s t i c lessons and

W a n g h a v e w o r k e d t o g e t h e r t o reveal t h e

life skills n e w c o l l e g e s t u d e n t s m u s t learn a r e

h i d d e n a s p e c t s of a locality t o t h e p u b l i c a n d

o f t e n t h e m o s t difficult o n e s f o r t h e m â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a n d

bring t h e public into a tangible relationship

Pinsky w a n t e d t o h i g h l i g h t t h i s o f t e n - h i d d e n

with t h e i r locality. M o r e at l i v i n g l e n s e s . c o m .

c h a l l e n g e . Photos by David Morris and the artist.

Photo courtesy the artists.

A F r e n c h b u i l d i n g w a s i n v a d e d by a g i a n t alien O C T O P U S in July of 2 0 0 8 . Bristol, UKb a s e d a r t i s t FilthyLuker, a s e l f - p r o c l a i m e d " w i s e - a s s s t r e e t a r t i s t s p e c i a l i z i n g in environmental installations and h u m o r o u s , shock-value street objects," installed t h e s e g i a n t , i n f l a t a b l e o c t o p u s t e n t a c l e s in t h e w i n d o w s of a French b u i l d i n g t h a t w a s a b o u t to be torn down. The four tentacles poured o u t of t h e w i n d o w s a n d s n a r l e d a b o v e p a s s e r s b y o n t h e s t r e e t below, giving t h e i m p r e s s i o n t h a t a large o c t o p u s h a d taken o v e r t h e b u i l d i n g . T h e b u i l d i n g is n o w g o n e , b u t t h e t e n t a c l e s h a v e b e e n u s e d in v a r i o u s l o c a t i o n s a r o u n d E u r o p e . FilthyLuker is r e k n o w n e d f o r his a n t h r o p o m o r p h i c o b j e c t s a n d eyeball i n t e r v e n t i o n s , b u t his " o c t o " i n s t a l l a t i o n s a r e t h e " B - m o v i e s " of p u b l i c art.

Photo courtesy the artist.

REDEFINING THE PUBLIC ART EXPERIENCE D E N V E R O F F I C E OF C U L T U R A L

www.DenverGov.org/PublicArt

AFFAIRS

CELEBRATING •

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PUBLIC ASHEVILLE Parks, Recreation

• Energy Loop, Dirk Cruiser

ART

Ambient Awareness, Hertzian Weather Systems, and Urban Architecture When it is raining in Oxford Street the architecture in fact the weather has probably

more to do with the pulsation

is no more important

than the rain;

of the Living City at that given

moment.

- P e t e r Cook

Culled from the catalog for the

1 9 6 3 exhibition Living

City, organized for the ICA in London by the young British architecture group

Archigram, the quote by Peter C o o k remains remarkably relevant for contemporary urbanists. In place of natural weather systems, however, |

today w e find that the data clouds of twenty-first-century urban space are increasingly shaping our experience of the city and the choices w e

S

make there. These Hertzian weather systems are b e c o m i n g as important as, if not more than, the formal organization of space and material.

m

columnist Clive Thompson 1 describes one condition of this new electronic atmosphere: an "ambient aware-

|

Writer, blogger, and Wired

T

ness" emerging out of social W e b media such as Twitter and Facebook status updates. Individually, these short strings of text are relatively meaningless, providing quotidian updates on the minutia of the daily lives of friends and acquaintances. Yet by skimming these short bits of

r

information, Thompson suggests, w e construct a peripheral a w a r e n e s s - a co-presence of s o r t s - w i t h these absent others.

i rhinoceros.mp3 I very loud I once a day I lat: 40.70851135 I Ion: -73.99899292 runningBrook.mp3 I soft I once a minute I lat: 40.70851342 | Ion: -73.99899010

sayYes.mp3 I soft I once only I lat: 40.70851342 I Ion: -73.99899010

Tactical Sound Garden Toolkit The Tactical Sound

Garden

(2006)

(TSGJ Toolkit is an open-source software platform for cultivating virtual "sound gardens" within contemporary

cities. It draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment supporting new spatial practices for social interaction within technologically mediated environments. Using a WiFi-enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants "plant" sounds (or "prune" those planted by others) within a positional audio environment. These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3 D audio engine c o m m o n to gaming environments-overlaying a publicly constructed s o u n d s c a p e onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones c o n n e c t e d to a WiFi-enabled device, participants drift though virtual sound gardens as they move throughout the city.

MARK SHEPARD

LAST P A G E

Laptop receiving movement data and broadcasting to sound producers

9 0 0 MHz Wireless Transmitters broadcasting audio stream

RF Shielding Umbrella w / Acceleromter and 2.4 GHz Ad-hoc Mesh Networking Transceiver Sennheiser Wireless Headphones

Hertzian Rain Hertzian

(2009)

Rain is a variable event structure designed to raise awareness of issues surrounding the wireless topography of urban

environments through telematic conversations based on sound and bodily movement. As with other aspects of the physical w o r l d such as land, water, and air, the electromagnetic spectrum is a limited resource. Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons5

illustrates the dilemma

in which multiple individuals acting independently in their o w n self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource even when everyone knows this is in no one's long-term interest. Hertzian

Rain addresses this competition for signal dominance through a participatory

scenario for real-time, asymmetrical communication between sound makers (sound artists, DJs, spoken w o r d performers) and sound listeners (an a u d i e n c e ) - o r hybrids thereof.

Writers and philosophers have long pondered questions concerning attention/distraction and the influence of the ambient environment on the perceptual conditions of urban space and the cognitive states of those w h o live in cities. Walter Benjamin's oft-cited observation that architecture is primarily received collectively in a state of distraction was originally published in 1935, in "The W o r k of Art in the A g e of Mechanical Reproduction," 2 while G e o r g Simmel's discussion of the origins of the blase attitude appeared in 1 9 0 3 , in his seminal essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life."3 More recently, Kazys Varnelis 4 revives this discussion in relation to Thompson's essay to argue that "the ambient awareness of our architectural environment that Benjamin described is waning, as w e find ourselves distracted by other media," and asks: "If architecture cedes the ambient environment to technology, what of architecture's ambitions?" Yet while this does enable him to question the efficacy of the architectural neo-avant-garde's "ecstacy of f o r m " - i n d e e d a critical q u e s t i o n - i t does so by maintaining the common understanding of architecture as a material practice.

Might there be another reading of the implications of Cook's observation? What if, instead of grounding the practice of architecture in the manipulation of material form, architecture became more like the weather? Hertzian weather?

NOTES 1

M A R K S H E P A R D is a media the influence

of mobile

and information an assistant University

at Buffalo,

whose

and pervasive

systems

professor

architect

on architecture of architecture

New

York.

research

media, and

explores

2

communications, urbanism.

and media

study

He at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html Walter Benjamin, "The W o r k of Art in the A g e of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations: and Reflections

G e o r g Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in The Sociology

is

of Georg Simmel

Press, 1 9 5 0 ) .

the

http://varnelis.net/ambience_and_altention 5

Essays

(New York: Schocken Books, 1 9 6 8 ) .

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articies/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html

(New York: Free

Mixed Sources

FSC

Product group f r o m well-managed forests and other c o n t r o l l e d sources w w w . f s c . o r g Cert no. SW-COC-002309 © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council

AVENUE OF LIGHT A PROJECT

BY

CLIFF

GARTEN

STUDIO

Commissioned by Fort Worth Public Art, Avenue of Light is a major new installation created by Cliff Garten Studio comprised of six soaring stainless steel sculptures.

Running the length of the median of Lancaster Avenue, the landmark artwork values the city's art deco past and kicks o f f new contemporary development with an impressive display of lighting infrastructure,

www.cliffgartenstudio.com