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Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló overlaid with AI-informed artwork by Sofia Crespo

2024-01-30T11:46:00-05:00

Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Batlló in Barcelona has served as the host for a major projection mapping artwork by Sofia Crespo over the weekend. Titled Structures of Being, the event drew 95,000 visitors across its showing on January 27th and 28th.

Image credit: Claudia Maurino

Created by Crespo with music by Robert M. Thomas, the project is described by organizers as “a spectacular setting that immersed the public in the nature contained inside Casa Batlló as well as in Gaudí's creative universe.” Created with the aid of artificial intelligence and the Barcelona Supercomputer Center, the project used data on the behavior of marine currents.

Image credit: Claudia Maurino

The artwork draws on Crespo’s interest in the boundaries of human perception in addition to her research into Gaudí’s own sources of inspiration. The resulting methodology saw Crespo use artificial neural networks to extract visual patterns from data inspired by the bra...

London’s Battersea Power Station hosts giant Christmas tree animation by artist David Hockney

2023-12-06T13:10:00-05:00

The world-renowned artist David Hockney has lit up London’s iconic Battersea Power Station with a giant installation resembling two Christmas trees. Titled ‘Bigger Christmas Trees’ and set on the station’s two north-facing 328-foot-tall chimneys, the animation will be on display from December 1st until Christmas Day, December 25th.

“Battersea Power Station is such a beautiful building, I wanted to decorate it in a way that I hoped would bring joy and hope to Londoners,” said Hockney about the scheme.

Image credit: Apple

The 10-minute animation was designed by Hockney on an iPad using a digital pencil; an appropriate method given that Battersea Power Station currently houses Apple’s UK headquarters.

In June, we reported on the opening of Foster + Partners’ Apple Store within the station, marking the company’s 40th store in the United Kingdom. Late last year, meanwhile, we covered a review of the newly completed WilkinsonEyre interior spaces in the station alongside a Frank Gehry-desig...

Iconic Parisian cathedral transformed into ‘sensory nighttime exploration’ by multimedia company Moment Factory

2023-10-26T12:53:00-04:00

Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to celebrate the building’s architectural and historical heritage.

Image credit: Moment Factory

Conceived in 2019 by cultural operator Cultival in collaboration with Musée de l’Armée, the project seeks to create a “sensory nighttime exploration” in which visitors wander through the Dôme des Invalides and its six chapels guided by light. The experience is divided into three acts, each portraying a distinct facet of the site: “its construction, the memories it harbors, and its power to inspire one and all.”

Image credit: Moment Factory

To project an experience onto the main dome, which measures 295 feet high and 98 feet at its smallest diameter, the t...

Art on theMART redefines an iconic Chicago building with projection series currently featuring Barbara Kruger

2021-10-20T19:33:00-04:00

Spread across the 2.5-acre façade of Chicago’s iconic theMART building, formerly known as the Merchandise Mart, a new projection by conceptual artist Barbara Kruger is featured. The display is part of the fall program for Art on theMART, the largest permanent digital art projection in the world.

Since its launch in 2018, Art on theMART has converted theMART into a canvas for public contemporary art projections by renowned local, national, and international multi-disciplinary artists. The program is the result of a 30-year commitment between theMART owner Vornado Realty Trust and The City of Chicago. The Art on theMART’s content rotates seasonally and is selected with the assistance and expertise of the Curatorial Advisory Board.

TheMART’s Art Deco exterior has hosted over 20 different projections since its debut. Projections are visible to the public for free from Chicago’s Wacker Drive and along with Riverwalk.

This season’s display coincides with the Art Institute of Chicago’s ex...

Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao lights up covered in Jenny Holzer projections this week

2019-03-22T15:45:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable, a survey of work by one of the most outstanding artists of our time. This exhibition features new works, including a series of light projections on the facade of the museum, which can be viewed each night from March 21 to March 30.

"The artist’s aim is to engage the public by creating evocative spaces that ask viewers to consider and potentially define their positions on contentious issues including the global refugee crisis, violence against women, and systemic abuses of power," reads the description of the new exhibition Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable.

"The exhibition features newly created works, including electronic signs animated by robotic assemblies, paintings, and light projections. Writing by Basque, Spanish, and international poets will be projected onto the museum’s facade after dark from March 21 to March 30, creating a series of nighttime public events."

View this post on Instagram Indescriptible es la mejor palabra que describe la exposición “Jenny Holzer. Lo Indescriptible" #Inauguración #HolzerGuggenheimBilbao Patrocina #FundaciónBBVA
A post shared by Museo Guggenheim Bilbao (@museoguggenheim) on Mar 22, 2019 at 4:02am PDT

Frank Gehry's buildings are no strangers to becomin...

London MSG concert venue confirmed; new Sphere designs unveiled for Las Vegas

2018-02-09T16:08:00-05:00

The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) confirmed on Friday that it wants to build the Sphere, a glazed orb with up to 18,000 seats and room for 5,000 standing, beside the Olympic Park in east London. Designs of a similar “sphere” planned for Las Vegas suggest that the vault of the roof will become a giant screen for vast projections, which could evoke the sensation of being underwater or in a forest.

Rumors about a monumental sphere-shaped music venue proposal for London seem to be gaining substance: The Guardian reports that the New York-based Madison Square Garden Company confirmed its plans to build a glazed orb — designed by Populous — for over 20,000 concert goers near the Olympic Park.

This interior rendering of Sphere Las Vegas suggests the capabilities of the dome's projection screens. Image: The Madison Square Garden Company

MSG also just revealed designs for a similar venue in Las Vegas, called Sphere, which will already break ground later this near the Venetian and Palazzo complex. The surface of Sphere reportedly boasts 190,000 linear feet of LED lighting on the exterior and 180,000 square feet of high-resolution screens on the interior, turning it into a giant, domed 360-degree screen for image and video projections, depending on the needs for each event that is being hosted.

The LOT: LAVA — Screens & Streets

2017-11-17T14:47:00-05:00

During LA CoMotion — a downtown event featuring the so-called city of tomorrow — a Los Angeles artist group is reframing what the city of tomorrow is by bringing the art to the screens and streets.

A local group of Los Angeles video artists is making strides — and having fun while doing it — with guerilla-style pops around the city on its endless canvases and spaces. Founded in 2003, LAVA is a community of artists working primarily in the field of immersive experiential video art. The goal of the LAVA community is to promote and nurture the movement of video art with the latest technological magic in the greater Los Angeles area.

LAVA members are constantly contributing to the current discourse around LED pixel mapping, 360 dome visuals, 3D and 4D projection mapping, interactive and immersive experiences, audiovisual software and hardware customization, content consciousness, ethics, and best practices.

Through...

ZHA projects light on 18th century castle

2017-09-20T14:08:00-04:00

‘Behaviour Morphe’ is a collaboration between Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), digital artists and computer science researchers Andy Lomas and Mubbasir Kapadia, and musician Max Cooper. It consists of dynamic light mapping projections on Karlsruhe’s Baroque castle in Germany. The piece was created for the 2017 Schlosslichtspiele Festival, which presents projections on the 170 meters facade of the castle. Schlosslichtspiele marries digital art and 18th century German masonry to create unique works.

Behaviour Morphe’ by ZHA for Schlosslichtspiele Festival 2017

In “Behaviour Morphe” ZHA presents its latest digital spatial simulation tools used for the analysis and design of its architecture. The projection interacts with the spaces of the castle using real time data, highlighting the research of ZHA’s Computational Design (ZH CODE) on iterative systems of development.

Behaviour Morphe’ by ZHA for Schlosslichtspiele Festival 2017

Musician Max Cooper said, “ZHA's ideas and work fit well with ...

ZHA projects light on 18th century castle

2017-09-20T14:08:00-04:00

Behaviour Morphe’ by ZHA for Schlosslichtspiele Festival 2017

Musician Max Cooper said, “ZHA's ideas and work fit well with ...

Singapore's Marina Bay Sands gets a spiffy state-of-the-art laser and water show

2017-06-01T14:05:00-04:00

Marina Bay Sands is set to unveil ‘Spectra’, a new entertainment experience with state-of-the-art light and water show in June. The city skyline will glimmer with a kaleidoscope of colours and lights each night with Spectra’s free-to-public outdoor light and water show displayed over the water at the Event Plaza along the promenade. Combining an array of state-of-the-art lasers, lighting, water effects and projections, the show promises to be a multimedia extravaganza [...].

"The show will also boast specially developed underwater LED fixtures that allow lights to show perfect whites and richer colour hues. Other state-of-the-art technology used in Spectra include a synchronisation software called timecode, which enables the soundtrack to trigger, down to the millisecond, all of the lasers, lighting, projections and water effects in harmony each time."

h/t CTBUH

33-story endangered species picture show

2015-08-06T19:02:00-04:00

According to the New York Times, the event cost around $1 million to produce and involved 40 stacked 20,000-lumen projectors on the roof of a building on West 31st Street that beamed 5K resolution video onto a space covering 33 floors — roughly 375 feet high and 186 feet wide.

The Empire State Building took a breather from being an icon last Saturday, and instead became the canvas for a series of projected images of endangered species and other trippy imagery. The event was part of "Projecting Change," an awareness-raising project thought up by noted National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos. The remarkable clarity and size of the images is due to the artistry of design firm Obscura Digital, who captivated a city of people used to being too sophisticated to unguardedly stare up in wonder. No word yet on the reaction of those city dwellers who, unaware of the show while occupying a penthouse and a questionable state of mind, looked out the window and saw giant animals gazing back at them.