An Expanded Perceptual Laboratory: Public Art and the Cinematic Techniques of Superimposition, Montage and Apparatus/Dispositif

The use of the moving image in public space extends the techniques of cinema— namely superimposition, montage and apparatus/dispositif—threatening either to dehistoricize and distract or to provide new narrative and associative possibilities via public art. These techniques also serve as helpful tools for analysis drawn from cinema studies that can be applied to examples of the moving image in public space. Historical examples include the multi-screen experiments of Charles and Ray Eames; and contemporary public projections such as Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, Robert Lepage’s The Image Mill, my own project entitled Workers That Live in the Mirror, and Daily tous les jours’ McLarena at Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles. These works illustrate the ways that public projections extend the effect of superimposition through the rehistoricization of space, expand the diegetic boundaries of the moving image through spatial montage, and enact new possibilities for the cinematic apparatus and dispositif through scale and interaction for the purposes of challenging historical narratives and scripts of urban behavior. The large-scale moving image in public art extends the perceptual laboratory of cinema to public space preparing us for more mutable, oneiric and cinematic encounters in and through public art. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with Ryerson University

E-Tower and Public Space:Transforming space through reactive architecture and personal mobile devices

In this paper we describe the theoretical background of E-Tower, a mobile phone based interactive installation with the CN Tower for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche 2010

Light, Data, and Public Participation

As practices in reactive architecture and locative media converge and urban screens and projection technologies proliferate we are becoming increasingly able to interact with data in public space. This confluence presents us with modes of digitally mediated participation in urban space that highlight bodily and architectural relationships with data rich environments as well as new sets of problems and possibilities regarding aesthetics, poetics, and politics. The article will analyze works by Alfredo Jaar, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, as they respectively exemplify the efficacy of the key components of public data visualization: mapping, expanded presence through architecture, and the ‘incompleteness’ and participatory nature of relational aesthetics. A more recent example, the E-TOWER project, an interactive data visualization project of Toronto’s energy visualized on the CN Tower for Nuit Blanche 2010, will also be examined as a form of collective participation in public data visualization. These projects provide the case studies necessary to reflect on the concept of the public, the potential of relational art strategies and the utility of play strategies for combining visualization and public space in order to enrich these spaces through the dramatization, problematization, animation, and relation of people, places, and data with from-a-distance interaction and urban screens. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with Ryerson University and OCAD University

Light, Data, and Public Participation

As practices in reactive architecture and locative media converge and urban screens and projection technologies proliferate we are becoming increasingly able to interact with data in public space. This confluence presents us with modes of digitally mediated participation in urban space that highlight bodily and architectural relationships with data rich environments as well as new sets of problems and possibilities regarding aesthetics, poetics, and politics. The article will analyze works by Alfredo Jaar, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, as they respectively exemplify the efficacy of the key components of public data visualization: mapping, expanded presence through architecture, and the ‘incompleteness’ and participatory nature of relational aesthetics. A more recent example, the E-TOWER project, an interactive data visualization project of Toronto’s energy visualized on the CN Tower for Nuit Blanche 2010, will also be examined as a form of collective participation in public data visualization. These projects provide the case studies necessary to reflect on the concept of the public, the potential of relational art strategies and the utility of play strategies for combining visualization and public space in order to enrich these spaces through the dramatization, problematization, animation, and relation of people, places, and data with from-a-distance interaction and urban screens. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with Ryerson University and OCAD University

On Provisionality

Brief essay which discusses the works of four artists shown in the Everything and Nothing exhibition, and places them in an historical, cultural, technological and artistic lineage. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with N/A, an art and design collective dedicated to project and event‐based cross‐pollination

Expressive Cartography, Boundary Objects, and the Aesthetics of Public Visualization

Aesthetic visualization projects that incorporate users, community stakeholders, multiple modalities and technologies necessarily emphasize the way that an artistic visualization can be both an artifact and a process — a conceptualization of aesthetic visualization that is useful for thinking about visualization in general. In this paper, the authors propose the concept of the visualization as boundary object, a move away from the indexical claims of visualization and instead towards an acknowledgement of the entangled nature of social, political, economic, cultural, technological and environmental actants. Through a description of the In The Air, Tonight public visualization project, the authors suggest that by making manifest the connections between these actants, a visualization project, as a form of expressive cartography, can contribute to the visibility of and engagement with important issues (e.g. homelessness) that affect society. Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with OCAD University

Expressive cartography and the aesthetics of public visualization

Aesthetic visualization projects that incorporate users, community stakeholders, multiple modalities and technologies necessarily emphasize the way that an artistic visualization can be both an artifact and a process — a conceptualization of aesthetic visualization that is useful for thinking about visualization in general. In this paper, the authors propose the concept of expressivity as a move away from the indexical claims of visualization and instead towards an acknowledgement of the entangled nature of social, political, economic, cultural, technological and environmental actants. Through a description of the In The Air, Tonight public visualization project, the authors suggest that by making manifest the connections between these actants, a visualization project, as a form of expressive cartography, can contribute to the visibility of and engagement with important issues (e.g. homelessness) that affect society