Art on the Marquee Unveils Its Second Exhibition

The second round of works is now being featured on “Art on the Marquee,” an ongoing project to commission public media art for display on the 80-foot-tall multi-screen LED marquee outside the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston. The project is a collaboration between Boston Cyberarts and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority.

The works will be screened daily (interspersed with commercial and informational content) as part of the MCCA’s longstanding neighborhood art program. All the works will be screened continuously on Sunday evenings from 8 p.m. – 9 p.m.

“This latest round of new art on the marquee is a testament to the strength of our new public art program and the unique talent in New England,” said James E. Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. “We truly believe that over time, as the growth of similar public video marquees grow, our collaboration with Boston Cyberarts will serve as a showcase for the rest of the world.”

“We couldn’t be happier with the second round of works. The artists have tackled the challenge of making works for a video sculpture, and are taking advantage of the different orientations and resolutions of the screens,” said Boston Cyberarts Director George Fifield. “And, we’re thrilled that ‘Art on the Marquee’ has captured the imagination of the city and that people are really seeing these pieces. They don’t have to go into a gallery – the work is right there in front of them – 80-feet tall!”

 About Art on the Marquee

 The largest urban screen in New England, “Art on the Marquee” offers artists more than 3,000 square feet of digital display on seven screens. The screens provide full-motion video and are seen by more than 100,000 pedestrians and motorists. The marquee is visible for a half a mile in many directions and is seen by traffic on Summer, D, and Congress streets, as well as from the surrounding hotels, office buildings and the Seaport World Trade Center.

A panel of Boston Cyberarts and MCCA staff selected the works that are featured. Calls for proposals will be issued throughout the year.

Boston Cyberarts is collaborating with digital media departments at Emerson College, Mass College of Art, and Rhode Island School of Design to create student-made work for the marquee. In the future, other colleges, universities and local high schools will be included in the initiative.

The  website (www.artonthemarquee.com) includes details about the works, artists, viewing schedules, events and future calls for artists.

 About The Artists

Francois De Costerd and Todd Antonellis: “Axiom #3: Territory”
This piece presents built and un-built environments in a series of tableaux that layer intensely color-saturated satellite and aerial photography. From an impossibly high point of view, the imagery moves, spins, zooms in and out and dissolves into the next tableau. “Territory” is part of Cycles and Ideals, an ongoing collaborative project that is a visual study of Western civilization dealing with the allure and implications of the consumer economy. www.cyclesandideals.com

Christopher Field and Sarah West: “I Am Waiting”
A visual representation of the rhythm and pattern of urban circulation on the subway and train lines of the Boston area, “I Am Waiting” uses multiple screens to highlight intersections of movement. This work features footage (both abstract and representational) of moving trains with shifting perspectives, colors and textures.  www.ckfield.com

Georgie Friedman. “Seas And Skies”
Art on the Marquee. "Sea and Skies" by Georgie FriedmanThis piece reintroduces elements of nature into the urban environment. Video of Boston’s blue sky and white clouds with a formation of circling birds on the tall vertical portion of the marquee is juxtaposed with video of the Pacific Ocean forming a series of large, crashing waves along the bottom horizontal screens. The created seascape shows its artificiality through a shift in scale and perspective as waves heave past their confines, clouds are cut off, and giant birds emerge from nowhere and then disappear. www.georgiefriedman.com

Lina Maria Giraldo: “Rain”
Art on the Marquee. Rain by Lina Marie GiraldoThis computer-generated animation represents how many bottles of water and coffee and soda cups we consume and waste every day. Bottles and cups start falling as if it they were raindrops. The way these life-size cups and bottles fall and bounce makes viewers feel as if they are literally under a shower of bottles and cups. After the screen has filled up, the viewer has the sensation of being covered in a huge mountain of bottles and cups. www.linamariagiraldo.com

Christopher GraefeLinda Dehart and Meg Brooker: “Emergence”
The Colors in Motion creative team provides architects, designers, planners and developers with transformational content sourced from traditional art forms. “Emergence” is the work of three members of Color in Motion: a painter, dancer, and digital media artist. Inspired by new large-scale vertical and horizontal digital media surfaces that break the standard aspect ratios of traditional video, Linda DeHart painted a series of abstract watercolors specifically for public displays. Digitally scanned at high resolution and artfully sequenced, the paintings provide an idea “canvas” for dancer Meg Brooker’s graceful gestures. Digital media artist and compositor Christopher Graefe wove these art forms together so that a dazzling panoply of rich colors and textures slowly transform from one composition to another. The effect is an ever-changing and intricate study of light and form that celebrates the grace and beauty of the human form in nature. www.colorsinmotion.com

Ben Houge: “Model Lightbox”
This digital collage shows photographs of backlit fashion advertisements that Houge took before moving from Shanghai to Boston. Tassels and fringes, pouty lips, and vapid eyes are extracted from their brand logos and marketing taglines, suggesting that in our intensely message-saturated media environment  images should be free to be, not sell.  www.benhouge.com

Michael Lewy – “City Of Work”
This piece is part of a long-term project that uses computer graphics and animation to create a dystopian society about the nature of work. The Marquee project is an animation of an office worker riding an endless elevator juxtaposed against video of the same worker in a solitary office. www.mlewy.com

Dennis Miller: “IV”
This animated abstract video uses bright, morphing colors in a geometric design. Thick converging lines change size and angle while the animation pans outward (up and down simultaneously) from an origin precisely at the upper tip of the bottom screen. The hard angles of the work align with the unusual curves of the screens themselves. www.dennismiller.neu.edu/

Matthew Shanley: “Building Boston”
This artwork reflects Shanley’s fascination that much of Boston is built upon man-made land. Thanks to human investment and labor, what was once water is now a thriving community. Playing with the different orientations of the component screens, the work contrasts video panning across the brick and rows of windows of local Fort Point buildings with video of water with layered animations plotting out the ghosts of future streets. www.littlesecretsrecords.com

Jeffu Warmouth: “Cut”
Art on the Marquee. "Cut" by Jeffu WarmouthBlack crumpled balls of paper hanging by strings are inverted, so they appear to be struggling to fly, held in the grip of a reversed gravity, tethered to the ground by threads. The action is in slow motion so it appears more significant on the monumental screens of the Marquee. A hand holding scissors reaches in and cuts the threads one at a time. More balls “drop” i.e. jump up, held by string, and the process repeats itself, ad infinitum. www.jeffu.tv

LINKS

Art on the Marquee

About the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority

About Boston Cyberarts

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Art on the Marquee Commissions Public Media Art on Urban Screen in Boston


 

Marketing Firm Devotes Office Windows to Outdoor Video Art

Launch Farm, a marketing and public-relations firm in Columbus, Ohio, is using some of the windows into their offices to showcase video art by young artists.

The first installation, entitled “Le Voyeur,” was created by Istanbul-born artist Ilke Akcasoy in partnership with Launch Farm.The video stylistically details acts of voyeurism and privacy intrusions as it plays outdoors, after dark on Launch Farm’s iconic windows on their loft-like studio at 772 North High Street. The installation will run through mid April.

On any given day, hundreds of shoppers, diners, cyclists and motorists whiz by the site, with necks craned to see what’s going on in the studio upstairs. Le Voyeur flips the script, as the window looking in becomes the window looking out. Now – who is watching whom?

Akcasoy was inspired by the interplay of spectacle and spectator: “I thought it would be interesting to explore the notion of stalking while also pointing out how normalized it has become in our society today.” The stalking element of Le Voyeur surprises many viewers, as giant, high-definition eyeballs appear to follow them as they walk down the street.

Launch Farm recognizes the community value of local art and plans to promote additional public installations throughout the year.

“The more young filmmakers and product designers I meet, the more I want to harness and expose their talents to the world,” said Christian Deuber, Principal at Launch Farm. “With digital video just a smartphone click away, I hope that our actions will inspire others to transform their lifeless, dark windows at night into some sort of artistic expression beyond sales promotions.”

LINKS

About Launch Farm

ArtPrize Announces $100,000 Juried Grand Prize

ArtPrize, the radically open international art competition and social experiment in Grand Rapids, Mich., has announced a new award for 2012: the ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize.

The $100,000 award will be added to a revised list of public and juried prizes that will be distributed at the end of the 19-day event. ArtPrize 2012 will take place Sept. 19 – Oct. 7, 2012.

In 2011, nearly 400,000 people visited Grand Rapids to engage with the work and ideas of nearly 1,600 artists. The new juried award changes the dynamic of the competition, and increases the total awards the event distributes to $550,000, making it the largest total prize purse for art in the world.

In addition to the Juried Grand Prize, ArtPrize will also increase its other juried awards to $20,000 each. The organization selected five categories to recognize:

  • Two-Dimensional
  • Three-Dimensional
  • Time and Performance
  • Urban Space
  • Venue

The increased commitment to juried awards will change the dynamic of the event and sets up a purposeful dialog between the opinions of arts professionals and the public, focusing on the artists’ work.

Jurors for all of the professional awards will be announced in the spring, prior to artist registration.

“For the past three years, ArtPrize has set itself apart by empowering the public and giving them a critical voice, but the success of the event is based on the exchange of artists’ ideas,” said DeVos. “We want ArtPrize to be accessible for everyone, so we hope the new awards will help artists understand our goals and encourage them bring new ideas to the event.”

The changes in Juried Prizes will result in a revision of the ArtPrize Public Vote Awards. For example, the top prize of $250,000 in 2011 will be reduced to $200,000 in 2012.  The second place awards will be scaled back from $100,000 in 2011 to $75,000 in 2012.  The third place award will continue to $50,000. The fourth-place through tenth-place awards will drop from $7,000 in 2011 to $5,000 in 2012.

The prize total for the public awards in 2012 will be $350,000, vastly outweighing the juried awards at $200,000, and keeping the organization’s focus on the community.

“The engagement of the community continues to be at the forefront of ArtPrize’s success,” added Catherine Creamer, executive director of ArtPrize. “Nearly 400,000 people participated in ArtPrize in 2011, not because we told them art mattered, but because we create a system where they matter to art.”

ArtPrize 2011 had more than 38,000 registered voters who submitted 383,000 total votes. With the increase of smartphones, mobile voting via the ArtPrize iPhone and new Android apps increased 62 percent.

ArtPrize 2011 began Sept. 21 with 1,582 artists from 39 countries and 43 U.S. states installing their work at 164 venues in a three-square-mile district in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

For more information and to see the winners of the 2011 competitions, visit www.artprize.org.