[Sonic Parole at Media Facades Festival Berlin 2008, screenings at O2 World / photo: Frank Hülsbömer] The presence of digital moving images in our urban environments is growing. The recent world soccer championships and the Olympics in China have left a lot of public transmission screens dispersed all over our cities1. New screens are being set up for the London Olympics. The advertising industry is predicting growth for “digital out-of-home“ media. Urban or regional screen networks, on public transport for instance, are becoming increasingly available, and there is renewed interest in media facades. There is also, however, growing public intolerance of the light emitted from large monitors, especially when their content lacks popular local appeal. With experience, the nationwide BBC “public space broadcasting”2 initiative aiming at the installation of large monitors in central urban locations has shifted to include more specifically local content in order to increase popular acceptance. There is, incidentally, no advertising on these monitors. We should also remember the extraordinary initiative of São Paulo’s mayor, banning all public advertising from the urban environment, to huge popular acclaim. The digital out-of-home industry has acknowledged the need for more diverse programming, including news, public service announcements, and entertainment content, amid their advertisement programs. Planning authorities are attaching more stringent conditions for architectural integration and content. But only with a real understanding of the medium will the local authorities be able to influence its development in favor of the public interest. If installation of such media in the public domain were contingent on the inclusion of cultural content, these screens could be an arena for social experimentation—and for art. Public space, whether physical or virtual, is an area for the creation and exchange of culture, for strengthening local economies and the cultural fabric, and for providing local identity. The BBC’s public space broadcasting initiative generates content in close collaboration with local authorities, artists, and educators in each specific location. Besides “public news, information and education points,” the program’s purpose is to provide a high-profile outlet for visual arts, digital innovation, and local filmmaking. Thus, Yoko Ono’s return to Liverpool's Bluecoat in April 2008 was shown live on the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool3, while in Bath, a collaborative research project, Cityware, uses the screens to interactively involve the local population in the creation of community art and games. Nevertheless, a number of issues present a potential for conflict among the public broadcaster and local political or arts institutions and cannot be underestimated: Should displays of violence, nudity, discrimination, or drugs be restricted? How do you present art to a public that is not specifically prepared to visit an art event? How relevant are official “content guidelines”? Moreover, the involvement of local residents may yield unexpected fears and resentments—not to mention the liberties advertisers take to shock and seduce consumers. Ultimately, artists might have to be ready to work in contexts ranging from popular entertainment to communally watching a sports event. On the other hand, with skilful programming, media art also presents a totally fresh opportunity to reach completely new audiences.
[James Nachtwey Photos screened during Urban Screens Melbourne 08 at Federation Square / photo: Mirjam Struppek] The most exciting merger of a TV-format screen and a public urban space has been achieved in Melbourne’s Federation Square with its FedTV.4 With an agenda of community-building and sustainability, it is a good example of how screen projects may build sustainable relationships among culturally diverse citizens of a vibrant, modern city. The Mia7 temporary media facade 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 scaffoldings. The first Mia series attempted to counter its commercial surroundings with a participatory approach: Passersby could contribute their portraits straight onto the screen through a national competition. Whether something so simplistic can seriously challenge commercial advertising remains questionable. For their one-month Tarantula project, the Milan-based Fondazione Nicola Trussardi presented works by 15 established artists during twice-daily hour-long screenings. Most impressive was Pippilotti Rist’s series of 16 one-minute video segments, Open My Glade,8 originally commissioned in 2000 by the Public Art Fund in New York City, where it aired in Times Square. It represented one of the most successful treatments in a commercial format, using the screen’s window-like character to afford fascinating views into an altogether different commercial media universe. A different approach is represented by the Streaming Museum9 project, which attempts to link urban screens to present joint, linked exhibitions “on cyberspace and public space on seven continents.” Billed as a “hybrid museum for the twenty-first century,” the Streaming Museum commissioned artists to create works that were then displayed on public screens across the world, as well as on the Internet and handheld electronic devices. In the fall of 2008, the Berlin Media Facade Festival10 presented a number of works in the public domain. Twenty-four Berlin-based artists participated, producing site-specific facade works for SAP, a software firm; Berlin’s 02 World arena; a 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 facades 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 02 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 opposition by local residents to nighttime light emissions.
[the Mood Gasometer at Media Facades Festival Berlin 2008 / photo: Frank Hülsbömer] The artworks for the Gasometer reflected on the role of the media facade as a communications medium with participatory potential. The Stimmungs Gasometer created by Benjamin Maus, Julius von Bismarck, and Richard Wilhelmer transformed the structure into an indicator that reflected residents’ moods. In his work Sonic Parole—Think different, Be yourself, Join the revolution! for the 02 entertainment arena facade, artist Georg Klein created an ironic commentary on radical social and political slogans of the 1960s and 1970s that are now often transformed into messages of radical chic in contemporary advertising. Architecturally well-incorporated and purpose-built screens can provide interesting aesthetic experiences with space and structure. During daytime the LED lights incorporated into the curvilinear window frames of the arena disappear completely, while providing interesting perspectives into interior and exterior space at night when the building is lit inside. Depending on the intensity of the latter, the interior either outshines the advertising message or is eclipsed by it. The newly built Hungarian cultural institute Collegium Hungaricum Berlin11 uses its media facade for self-promotion, as an artistic medium, and to generate funds for its operations. The festival offered an opportunity to try out the newly fitted rear projection equipment and raise the public profile of the location and the facilities. Consequently, Peter Greenaway was later happy to show his Tulse Luper Suitcases project as a live veejay performance projected on the facade, during the Berlin Film Festival in Spring 2009. The Freewaves Hollywould Festival12 filled TV sets and monitors in 30 selected stores along Hollywood Boulevard with new media art. Additionally, new art videos were shown in and on 2,200 TV sets in transit buses throughout Los Angeles, while artist-activists simultaneously staged guerrilla-style actions that questioned the appropriation of media for surveillance. “Helping communities see their own image without a corporate lens has been a major motivation for Freewaves ever since the beginning,” explains the organization’s director, Anne Bray. The videos ranged in content and location, including a gender program that looped in the store window of an erotic supply store and a documentary about people who traveled to New Orleans to help residents after hurricane Katrina. Some architectural projects have proven to be suitable for longer-term presentations of media artworks. An important condition is the successful aesthetic amalgamation of the screen itself with the architectural building shell. The more the light-pixel installation becomes an artwork, the less its appreciation depends on constantly changing content and promotion—a fact demonstrated in the now legendary Bix media facade,13 which covers a part of the Kunsthaus Graz building with an organic form of light rings. For a large cultural institution like the Kunsthaus this concept serves well as additional unique exhibition space for special artistic productions, communicating creatively with the public. The Ars Electronica Center14 has recently followed this example. High-quality site-specific content, however, can transform an ordinary facade. The Dexia Tower15 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 Lab[au] used a huge touch-screen installation in front of the tower as interface for interactive engagement with the public. Another corporate project, SPOTS,16 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 facade. The project showed the challenge for site-specific content if the building itself is not a clear landmark—especially, in this instance, in the visual clutter of the redesigned Potsdamer Platz. To draw attention to the installation, artist 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. References 1. This essay was first published as “A Plea for the Media Arts” in Public Art 2.0, PublicArtReview, issue 41, Fall/Winter 2009, pp. 46-49 |
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