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Digital City Art’s objectives are closely aligned with elevating Riyadh to a contending global cultural leader as decreed in the Vision 2030 plan.
INTERNATIONAL
Artists
Jason Bruges & Chevalier UK
Bjarke Bungaard DENMARK
Jeppe Hein DENMARK
Julius von Bismarck
Martin Creed
GERMANY
UK
Studio INI
Bruce Munro
GREECE
UK
imgeLab
Howeler + Yoon
TURKEY
USA
teamLab
Diana Thater
JAPAN
USA
eness
AUSTRALIA
Janet Echelman USA
Amanda Parer AUSTRALIA
Miguel Chevalier
SOSOlimited
FRANCE
USA
Simon Heijdens THE NETHERLANDS
Marco Brambilla USA
Hollwich Kushner USA
Studio Drift THE NETHERLANDS
Bjarke Bungaard BIG <3 NYC
A 10-foot tall glowing heart sculpture consists of 400 transparent, LED lit, acrylic tubes donated generously by the Austrian lighting company Zumtobel. The transparent tubes refract the lights of Times Square, creating a cluster of lights around the heart. The hovering heart will appear to pulsate as its tubes sway in the wind. When people touch a heart-shaped sensor, the heart will glow brighter and beat faster as the energy from their hands is converted into more light. The heart reflects that any place on Earth is made of people and light, an indicator to human energy. The more number people together result into the light being that much stronger.
Hollwich Kushner Wendy
Wendy won the prestigious MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program back in 2012. Wendy cleans the air with a skin that is capable of taking the equivalent of 260 cars off the road. With all that clean air, Wendy’ s spiky arms reach out with micro-programs like blasts of cool air, music, water cannons and mists to create social zones throughout the courtyard. Thus, help shelter the party-goers as well as discreetly help the environment. This is an impressive start to thinking about how aesthetics and responsibility can better coexist. The next version further explores its eco-friendly nature by bolstering Wendy with Solar Power.
Julius von Bismarck Public Face
This eight-meter-high smiley face, a sculpture made of steel and neon tubes, has been installed at different times on tall, prominent rooftops in Lindau, Berlin, and Vienna. Due to its immense scale, the sculpture becomes part of the skyline, and its varying expressions can be seen from far away. For example, it may seem angry, happy, sad, or surprised. The emotions conveyed by the sculpture are based on the facial expressions of local passers-by, who are filmed by surveillance cameras. Their facial expressions are then analyzed by software created by the artists that uses algorithms developed by the Fraunhofer Institute. The machine is thus able to read the emotions on a person’s face. It uses these algorithms to make the changing, average emotions of city inhabitants visible to everyone in public space.
Janet Echelman 18 Echelman’s soft, voluminous net sculpture surged 180 feet through the air between buildings above Oxford Circus, the busiest pedestrian area in all of London. The monumental floating form is composed of layers of fiber, braided and knotted together in vibrant hues that pulse with changing wind and weather to create a choreography of undulating color. At night, the sculpture comes to life with projected colored light. The precise colors and patterns are created interactively with members of the public, who are invited to use their smartphones to select colors and tap out patterns with the touch of a finger. These patterns are projected onto the monumental surface of the sculpture, and proceed to interact with one another, creating ripple effects for all to see.
Marco Brambilla Total Green Universe
Total Green Universe (LiDar) is a 360-degree projection on 6 minute continuous loop that takes the visitors on an impressionistic journey through a idyllic palm forest and lush gardens populated with fantastical plant life. Visitors are invited to step through a suspended cylindrical canvas to explore a magical world where we see plant life sprouting from the ground into bioluminescent point clouds which react to human presence. The three-dimensional projection immerses the visitor into a lush ecosystem running on a constant loop, there is no definitive beginning or end, meaning there is no timed entries. This will be an immersive yet abstract portrait of a natural setting, often serving as a time capsule of nature that existed and will exist.
Martin Creed Understanding
Times Square marquees, roadside signs, and advertising logos are the stock-intrade for giant neon signs. Martin Creed has adapted the medium for his own colossal sign, proclaiming a word rather than selling a product. His chosen word, “understanding,” is fundamental to communication between people. Spelled out in ten-foot-tall letters mounted on a 50-foot-long steel I-beam, Understanding rotates 360 degrees, constantly shifting our perspective on the work. The beam spins at varying speeds, the rhythm determined by a computerized program designed by the artist. This sculpture goes to express the artist’s view on the wider political environment but at the same time also conveys a rather personal message to everyone.
SOSOlimited Diffusion Choir
The original installation contained 400 folding elements that are independently opened and closed, controlled by a custom flocking algorithm. Both highly technical and Mesmerizing the Public The breath-like movements of the piece create a contemplative space enjoyed by tenants and visitors. Diffusion Choir has received excellent coverage from media outlets like WIRED and Mashable, with over 2,000,000 video views on Facebook in the first week.
SOSOlimited Colorspace
an interactive sculpture that translates text messages into breathtaking animations of colored light. As tenants enter the space, they can text anything to the wall of suspended light pendants. The sculpture responds by illuminating the space with a sparking wash of color that matches the content of their text. Colorspace gives tenants ownership of their shared space and provides a playful, surprising moment as they enter and exit the building every day. It transforms the lobby into a dynamic, participatory space.
Miguel Chevalier The World Bubble
Miraj is an interactive artwork that you paint with your voice. Say anything into the Apple TV remote, and within seconds Miraj brings it to life. A perpetually changing collage of mesmerizing image and color takes over your TV screen. No two Mirajs are the same. The possibilities are infinite, limited only by your imagination. What does a butterfly Miraj look like? What does a butternut squash Miraj look like? A pizza Miraj? A zebra Miraj? Once you start playing, it’s hard to put it down. The potential to turn any television into a high definition artwork, coupled with built-in speech recognition, got us excited about making something for the new Apple TV. The magic of Miraj is enabled by custom image processing algorithms.
Miguel Chevalier The World Bubble
Selfie x Selfie opens a metaphysical portal in your mobile device that lets you travel deep into the hyperspace of your own selfie. It’s also an Android Experiment that uses your phone’s camera, motion sensors, and graphics hardware to generate a reactive 3D universe that responds to your movements in real time. Google Creative Lab asked us to design an open source Android app using the Cinder graphics platform. We set out to use modern mobile graphics technology to expand on our work with real time video filters from a decade ago. We created Selfie x Selfie, an app that stretches, multiplies, and deconstructs your reflection into an undulating landscape of color. It uses the phone's motion sensors to let users explore three dimensional space, and the camera to capture their image and create ripples in the fabric of spacetime.
Jason Bruges Nature Trail
Jason Bruges Studio has completed a unique project for Great Ormond Street Hospital for children to improve their journey to theatre. The brief was to design and install a distraction artwork helping to create a calming yet engaging route that culminates in the patient’s arrival at the anaesthetic room. Inspiration came from the idea of viewing the patient journey as a ‘Nature Trail’, where the hospital walls become the natural canvas, with digital look out points that reveal the various ‘forest creatures’, including horses, deer, hedgehogs, birds and frogs, to the passerby. The work has been installed in the theatres floor within the hospital’s new Morgan Stanley Clinical Building, the first part of the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre.
Jason Bruges Reflex Portraits
Jason Bruges Studio was commissioned by Self Initiated, to create Reflex Portraits; a series of 6 unique animated digital portraits exploring reactions. The series is a development of the studio’s Mirror Mirror piece that was exhibited in Beijing as part of the global tour of Decode: Digital Design Sensations - by the V&A Museum and onedotzero. The piece explores digital narcissism and the work is as much about the way viewers respond to the portraits as to the canvases themselves.
Miguel Chevalier Peasouper
Jason Bruges Studio brought a slice of London’s past to St Petersburg for Yota’s Festival 2010, with the exclusive ‘Peasouper’ artwork. The studio showcased an interactive installation where activity at the Festival was combined with the infamous ‘peasoup’ fog, most associated with Dickensian London. Visitors’ silhouettes appeared to float through the space as if passers-by in the foggy streets of the UK’s capital.
Miguel Chevalier Pixel Wave
A playful Seesaw that plays on the fun familiarity of childhood. The Seesaw is equipped with thirty-three rows of light that responds to the participants tilt as they whistle through the air. Climb on and watch how the light bounces back and forth with each swing or add a Ping bong ball to the mix and watch the ball move from side to side between the two individuals.
Miguel Chevalier Digital Supernova
A playful Seesaw that plays on the fun familiarity of childhood. The Seesaw is equipped with thirty-three rows of light that responds to the participants tilt as they whistle through the air. Climb on and watch how the light bounces back and forth with each swing or add a Ping bong ball to the mix and watch the ball move from side to side between the two individuals.
Miguel Chevalier The World Bubble
Origin of the World Bubble was suspended high above Oxford Circus, which became pedestrianised during "Lumiere London 2018". The piece has been specially commissioned to fit the world-famous site, a key digital playground for pedestrians during the event. Origin of the World Bubble is inspired by the world of biology, microorganisms, and cellular automata. Cells multiply in abundance, divide, and merge in sometimes slow, sometimes rapid rhythm on the inflatable sphere (11 m diameter). Everything comes together, comes apart, and changes shape at top speed. These organic universes mingle sometimes with constructivist universes made up of Pixels. These unstable, black-and-white megapixel tableaux gradually give way to vivid, color-saturated spirals.
eness
Sonic Light Bubble This living, breathing bubble responds with light and sound when approached and touched. This synthetic organism is designed to humanize lighting-based public art, attracting passers-by to engage and interact with its beauty. The Sonic Light Bubble is a six-metre diameter, clear, inflatable structure, dotted with an array of addressable LED disks shining inside and out. These custom disks act as a volumetric video screen providing mesmerizing 360-degree visual content, day and night. Sounds also respond to the visitors on the outside. The Sonic Light Bubble can be set up in two hours and can be dismantled only in one.
eness
Light Seesaw A playful Seesaw that plays on the fun familiarity of childhood. The Seesaw is equipped with thirty-three rows of light that responds to the participants tilt as they whistle through the air. Climb on and watch how the light bounces back and forth with each swing or add a Ping bong ball to the mix and watch the ball move from side to side between the two individuals.
Over the last decade, many Saudi artists, painters, designers and photographers have risen to become leading voices for contemporary Arab creativity
Saudi Arabian
Artists
Yusef Alahmad RIYADH
Manal Al Dowayan RIYADH
Nugamshi RIYADH
Basmah Felemban RIYADH
Maha Malluh RIYADH
Abdulnasser Gharem RIYADH
Nugamshi KSA
Born in 1982 in Al-Qurayyat, Nugamshi lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Nugamshi’s research explores the evolution of traditional calligraphy and typography employing different techniques and unusual tools (broom or spray paint instead of brushes). Despite intentionally breaking with convention, Nugamshi remains true to that tradition of calligraphy while stirring dialogues within communities and looking for the spirit of the Arabic letters. Nugamshi has taught workshops on basic training, techniques and the history of calligraffiti at the YourAOK art organization in Kuwait and has presented performances and staged exhibitions in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and the US.
Basmah Felemban KSA
Born in Jeddah 1993, Basmah Felemban is a self-taught Graphic Designer who worked in various fields during an after graduating high school in 2011. Her first work “Jeem”, that was a transition from Design to Contemporary Art made its debut at the British Museum in 2012 as a sideshow to “Journey To The Heart of Islam: Hajj Exhibition.” In 2017 Basmah graduated with an MA in Islamic and Traditional Art from the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. At such an early stage in her career, Basmah has exhibited in many international and local exhibitions such as Art Dubai, 2139/, contemporary art Istanbul, Venice Biennale, and Art Abu Dhabi. In 2014 she won The Arab Women Awards in the “Young Talent” category.
Abdulnasser Gharem KSA
Born in the year 1973,Abdulnasser Gharem is a Saudi Arabian artist and also a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army. In April 2011, his installation Message/ Messenger sold for a world record price at auction in Dubai. Gharem’s work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information, His artwork is characterized by innovative use of materials, including rubber stamps, a collapsed bridge, and an invasive tree.
History in Kaleidoscope FREE THE COLORS
Singing SWARTZ
Yusef Alahmad KSA
Yusef Alahmad is a Saudi graphic designer and artist based in Manhattan, New York while completing his MFA degree in graphic design at the Academy of Art University. Yusef’s work is colorful and usually consists of Arabic typography and patterns. His work has been featured in Print Magazine (US), Baseline Magazine (US), Alef Magazine (Qatar), Oasis Magazine (Saudi Arabia), Design Magazine (Saudi Arabia), Khaleejesque Magazine(Kuwait), among others and exhibited in numerous shows around the world.
Manal Al Dowayan KSA
Born in 1973, Manal Al Dowayan is a Saudi Arabian contemporary artist, best known for her installation piece Suspended Together from the Home Ground Exhibition at the Barjeel Art Foundation in 2011. She has shown work in a number of shows including the 2012 Soft Power show at Alan Art Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the 2013 Journey of Belonging, a solo show at Athr Gallery in Jeddah, the 2017 100 Masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art in Paris, as well as having her work exhibited in the 2014 USA Biennial in Houston, and the Venice Biennale in the Future of a Promise Exhibition. Her work spans many mediums from photography to installation and focuses on a progressive examination and critique women’s roles in Saudi society.
ًﺷﻜﺮا Thank You