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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...

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...

The Berlin Wall made discoverable again via AR, 30 years after its fall

2019-08-27T17:36:00-04:00

The installation is part of a week-long festival running from 4-10 November for the 30th anniversary. It aims to “celebrate the successes of the revolution and to recall the joy at regained freedoms and the risks and pains of social upheaval,” according to a statement from the organisers, Kulturprojekte Berlin.

As the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches this November, various art projects prepare to commemorate the events of the peaceful 1989 revolution throughout the city.

Via large-scale interactive installations, 3D video projections, and an augmented reality app, artists seek to give back relevance and historic significance to places that can easily be overlooked and forgotten.

An AR version of the old Berlin Wall "death strip" fortification overlaid on a Berlin sidewalk via the MauAR app. Image via mauar.berlin.

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...

Occupying institutional space with light: The Illuminator

2018-10-31T16:29:00-04:00

Enter the Illuminator, a New York-based art activist collective, whose shifting membership has mastered the legal grey zone that regulates projection in public. [...] the Illuminator takes the normally stationary technology out of the classroom and onto the streets, affixing a high-powered, 12,000-lumens projector atop a van — or, when special nimbleness is required, a trolley — to ignite urban façades with political statements that are as bold as they are temporary.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

For this recent Urban Omnibus feature, digital media scholar Eli Horwatt interviews art-activist collective The Illuminator. Since capturing the public attention with their Occupy-inspired 99% Bat Signal projection in 2011, the collective has been, quite literally, making headlines with large-scale interventions on institutional facades such as the "We’re all sitting ducks" slogan beamed on the outside of the United Nations building during a Nuclear Non-Proliferation conference in 2015 as well as smaller installations like the Edward Snowden hologram.

Image: The Illuminator Collective.

"When we project directly onto the facade of an institution whose policies and actions we stand against, we know that we are working within a set of constraints that require precise planning and rapid adaptability. We know that if they become aware of our actions, institutions will work quickly to remove any type of critical messaging from association with their buildi...

#SailsNotSales: public protests after Sydney Opera House displays horse racing ad on its facade

2018-10-15T16:13:00-04:00

After a horse race ad was projected onto the structure’s iconic roof earlier this week, protestors took to the streets in objection to the commodification of their beloved building.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered in the evening hours of October 9 when the, usually, off-white iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House were used as a video projection canvas to promote a major upcoming horse race in New South Wales. The crowd booed and tried to interrupt the projection with a small army of flash lights, chanting "Whose house? Our house".

The protest meanwhile has drawn much wider circles, resulting in a Change.org petition with over 300,000 supporters against any future use of the UNESCO World Heritage Site as a promotional billboard and a rebuke from the Heritage Council of NSW.

Walt Disney Concert Hall lights up over the weekend with projections by Refik Anadol

2018-10-03T13:42:00-04:00

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, the LA Phil has put on quite the birthday extravaganza, kicking off over the weekend with performances by Chris Martin and members of the Doors; a special CicLAvia bike ride that stretched from Downtown's Disney Concert Hall to the Hollywood Bowl; and a series of vibrant projections from Refik Anadol.

Announced back in September, the local media artist used 45 terabytes of data derived from the Phil's archive to create a series of patterns then projected on the exterior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Called 'WDCH Dreams', the media installation lit up the iconic Frank Gehry building beginning Thursday night, delighting passersby, and will continue to do so every evening through October 6th.

Refik Anadol to cover Walt Disney Concert Hall with vivid data projections

2018-09-13T15:42:00-04:00

One of the most recognizable buildings in Downtown Los Angeles—the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall—will be used as a canvas later this month. To celebrate the start of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new season, colorful patterns will be projected onto the metallic surface of the wavy concert hall for a little more than a week, courtesy of artist Refik Anadol.

For the LA Philharmonic projection series, called WDCH Dreams, internationally renowned media artist Refik Anadol dug deep in the digital orchestra archives—nearly 45 terabytes of data—and applied Google Arts and Culture's machine intelligence to it, which parsed the files into millions of data points that were then re-categorized and, with the help of deep neural networks, made new connections between LA Phil's "memories." According to Anadol, this process awakes the metaphorical "consciousness" of Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the result is a "radical visualization of the organization’s first century and an exploration of synergies between art and technology, and architecture and institutional memory."

WDCH Dreams, renderings by Refik Anadol Studio

To visualize the result of this process, Anadol will be using 42 large scale projectors, with 50K visual resolution, 8-channel sound, and 1.2M luminance in total, which should create quite a spectacular display on the stainless-steel fac...

Thinking with a box, to think outside the box.

2017-12-07T14:50:00-05:00

FreelandBuck has recently completed an 8,000-square-foot (or square-cubed) office interior/exterior for Hungry Man Productions headquarters in Los Angeles. Hungry Man asked FreelandBuck to potentially think outside the box and evaluate the traditional organization of an office. The result being a design just as playful and inviting as Hungry Man's own identity.

Drawing by FreelandBuck

The parti of the project creates a composition party of stacked, unstable cubes and playfully composes them through informal arrangements creating a diversity of stable and flexible working configurations while maintaining the scalelessness of discovery and fragility. Feigning randomness, the cubicles are calibrated to support specific relationships between staff while leaving adjacent breakout spaces open and flexible.

In addition, cubicle boxes pile up to make visually prominent display and projection areas that take full advantage of the generous ceiling height of the warehouse shell.

Photos by E...

Scaffolding around Grenfell Tower may be used as screen for art projections

2017-08-22T12:17:00-04:00

As workers prepare to remove the charred debris from Grenfell Tower, the specially erected scaffolding and netting around the building that will block the view of their work from the public may be used as a kind of projection screen for local children's painting and art. At least, that's what site and remediation manager Michael Lockwood has proposed, in part because the schoolchildren are apparently unhappy staring at the burned out husk of the previously-flammably-clad tower.

Residents take in the burned tower. Image: Catholic Church England via Flickr

According to The Art Newspaper, "Lockwood recently met primary school pupils in the area who said that looking up at the tower is upsetting. 'I asked them if they would like to come up with paintings of what they would like to see on the building,' he said. The works would be projected on to the scaffolding screen."

OMA-designed Chinese Pavilion now open at 2015 Venice Art Biennale

2015-05-23T01:31:00-04:00

OMA returns to Venice once again in the debut of the Chinese Pavilion they designed for the 2015 International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, "All the World's Futures", which opened to the public on May 9. Commissioned by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, the multimedia exhibition balances aspects of traditional Chinese culture and society with the works of various contemporary artists and designers all under the theme, "Other Future."

The exhibition features work by notable Chinese creatives like classical composer Tan Dun, Liu Jiakun of Jiakun Architects, artist Lu Yang, filmmaker Wu Wenguang / Caochangdi Work Station, and Wen Hui / Living Dance Studio. The artworks are positioned against a backdrop of digital projections so as to connect the interior and exterior works.

All images Copyright OMA.

OMA Asia designed "Other Future" in collaboration with curatorial advisor Kayoko Ota, who was in charge of the Japanese Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Dong...

Luftwerk's FLOW/Im Fluss to illuminate Chicago's Couch Place alley with screens made of water

2014-09-11T17:06:00-04:00

Crafty space manipulator Luftwerk will showcase FLOW/Im Fluss, a nightly light and water installation at Chicago's Couch Place alley on September 17-20 from 5 p.m. to midnight. Luftwerk, the Chicago-based collaborative established by Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, is best known for their signature medium of site-specific light and projected video installations.

Presented by the Chicago Loop Alliance, the Goethe-Institute Chicago, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, Luftwerk's FLOW/Im Fluss celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Sister Cities Chicago and Hamburg. As a nod to each city's river locations, the installation visualizes the characteristics of the Chicago River and Hamburg's River Elbe through video compositions that will be projected on "screens" made of water.

Having lived in both cities, Luftwerk is based on the encompassing, connective nature of water in FLOW as people gather to get a closer look at the flow of data readings collected from both rivers. Adding sound ...

Opera adaptation for "Plan Of The City" film currently in the works

2013-11-18T13:29:00-05:00

Since our sister site Bustler first mentioned Joshua Frankel's "Plan Of The City" in 2011, a new project is now underway to bring the film to the stage as an opera. An official title for the production is yet to be decided.

Frankel, composer Judd Greenstein, and 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith wlll combine their artistic talents to tell the story of urban planner Robert Moses and journalist Jane Jacobs, who each influenced the New York City landscape and the field of urbanism.

Be on the lookout for some Plan Of The City events happening this week. The "indie classical" NOW Ensemble will give a live performance of the Plan Of The City on Nov. 19 at the Winter Garden in Brookfield Place. The event is free!

Frankel will then conduct his first animation study at the BAM Next Wave Festival on Nov. 23, as part of the 21c Liederabend program. As musical exploration, the animation will be presented with a music segment written by Greenstein set to Walt Whitman's M...

Bright prospects for the second Genius Loci Weimar videomapping festival

2013-08-16T18:23:00-04:00

The second Genius Loci Weimar festival took place in Weimar, Germany last weekend from Aug. 9-11. The annual festival is a growing event that celebrates and gathers talent in the emerging art form of videomapping. After last year's success, Genius Loci Weimar has expanded to include in its program a competition, symposium, videomapping workshops, and an exhibition in cooperation with the Bauhaus University Weimar.

"YOUR TEXT HERE" by Marcos Zotes

2012-11-07T20:26:00-05:00

You may recall Marcos Zotes from his Rafmögnuð Náttúra light installation in Iceland that we previously featured here on Archinect. He has just shared with us his latest project, "YOUR TEXT HERE"...

The city is constantly telling us what to do, what to think, and how to act. Using explicit visual language, a multiplicity of billboards, signs, images and symbols invade our public spaces in order to tell us something. YOUR TEXT HERE is a project that challenges this condition: Citizens are given the opportunity to change their role as receivers of information in order become the authors. The way it works is simple: you submit an anonymous text message in a website through your mobile phone, and in turn it is automatically projected at large scale onto the façade of a building.

"Public space is not something that is given or inherited, it must be fought for and defended constantly" says Marcos Zotes.

YOUR TEXT HERE is a participatory, site-specific light installation that...

Augmented Structures: Architecture Beyond Visible

2012-01-10T14:46:00-05:00

Salon2 has shared with us their completed 400m2 architectural installation on the façade of Yapı Kredi Bank Culture Building at Galatasaray Square in İstanbul.

The first stage in the Augmented Structures project with the Augmented Structures v1.1: Acoustic Formations / İstiklâl Caddesi installation which reanimates phenomena (architecture, sound and visual arts) that appear to be completed and concluded. The acoustic memory of İstiklâl Caddesi is first transformed into an architectural surface and then this solid form became a dynamic visual performance.

The project brings together disparate disciplines like architecture, sound and the visual arts which influence one another to such a degree that it is impossible to separate them. While the project aims to interpret the world in visual and aesthetic terms, in its capacity as an "interdisciplinary transformation" project it also questions the point where art and architecture stand today and the point they might reach in ...