The Power of Digital Art in Transitional Spaces

Lauren Lancaster

Transitory urban spaces like airports, metros, and transport hubs are a key urban zone which can be reinvigorated by immersive digital artworks.

Public art has long embodied the cultural visions of diverse communities and peoples - from ancient frescos, reliefs and statues across geographies to political art demarcating eras of repression, liberation and transformation. As populations change and the cities we live in evolve, so too must the public art we observe and endorse. In their study on smart cities, Barth et al. (2018) posit that digital art in public spaces is the newest iteration of epoch-defining public art. By incorporating complex, interactive technology in artworks and adapting art pieces to ubiquitous digital screens and displays across cities, we are creating a novel and experimental era of public art. 

The digital era of public art takes issue with the confronting universality of visual culture. It seeks to challenge the exploitation of our senses, particularly sight, for blatantly consumerist ends. Being present in and positively engaged by the cities we live in is difficult when we are either bombarded with rapid-fire content on our smartphones or confronted with gaudy large-scale digital advertisements as we walk down city streets.

Digital art in public space should aim to achieve the inverse effect: focusing on slowing down, encouraging pause and evoking wonder through visual engagement. These art pieces offer conspicuous counterpoints to the hyper-visual city experience to which we often don’t entirely consent but have grown accustomed. Government, the property industry, urban designers and other key stakeholders should consider how we can better support such projects in Australian cities.

Why place digital art in transitory urban spaces? 

Transitory urban spaces like airports, metros, and transport hubs are a key urban zone which can be reinvigorated by immersive digital artworks. In these often nondescript, liminal areas, it is easy to adopt a dissociative, utilitarian approach unconcerned with how users feel and act while participating in daily migrations between home, work, play, and rest. Without a coherent creative vision for such areas, random advertisements, graffiti, and empty walls become the slapdash norm. Such an approach is the epitome of a lost opportunity. Instead, we can activate these local public spaces through digital art collaborations. 

The introduction of digital art in transitory zones has already seen success globally. Take UK-based design firm Universal Everything’s contribution to the Seoul Metro Art Center in Gyeongbokgung Station, in South Korea, as an example. 

The work, titled ‘Infinity’, features UE’s iconic colourful figures parading through blank space on large video screens around the metro station entrances. The work’s algorithm generates the characters in real time, making them unique and unreproducible. Each figure's digital textures, gaits and quirks echo the dynamic flow of metro users moving around the city, creating an evocative range of personalities as varied as the human populations who observe them. Where the metro designers could have left walls unadorned, they instead chose a digital art piece that complements the momentum of the area and the diversity of users in Gyeongbokgung Station. 

Photograph: courtesy of Universal Everything

The incorporation of digital art in train and metro stations, such as in Gyeongbokgung, is more straightforward to implement than some may initially expect. 

Is it difficult to install digital art in a transitional space? 

It does not necessarily demand the installation of purpose-built screens at a vast scale but can involve repurposing existing digital advertisement spaces or signage displays. Many such industrial displays already contain LCD/LED and infrared sensor technology that would allow for their adaptive use in both passive and interactive digital art. There is significant scope in this area for digital art collaborations that not only enhance the aesthetic appeal of transitory spaces but also function to collect data on foot traffic, improve pedestrian experiences and bring light, colour and motion to urban spaces that may otherwise remain unactivated, dark or unwelcoming. 

Closer to home the Sydney Signal Box Public Art project by Art Pharmacy has combined digital art and existing public infrastructure to reimagine inconspicuous elements of everyday Aussie streetscapes: the humble signal boxes lining roads in Sydney’s Inner West, North and CBD. These utilitarian features of public space have historically offered little to inspire, let alone command our prolonged attention. Yet 56 boxes received makeovers in 2019 as diverse digital designs by local and international artists were printed on vinyl and wrapped around the boxes. Some were abstract and bold, while others were kitschy, illustrative or hyperdetailed. 

Many are still currently in situ, bringing brightness and whimsy to thoroughfares across the city and generating incidental artistic encounters each time someone passes them throughout the day.

“In a time when issues of accessibility, waning gallery attendance and a mire of funding uncertainty complicate the visual arts, digital art in transitory public spaces can democratise and normalise art consumption as a part of everyday urban experience”

Photograph: Claudia Chinyere Akole

How can AI transform the experience of public digital art? 

The realm of public art also benefits from what generative AI can offer artists and urban planners. The work Faces by digital art studio Iregular uses facial recognition data to “track the facial traits of participants standing in front of a screen” and then amalgamates them to generate a “an ever-changing 3D portrait of a single digital being” (Iregular, 2022). Adaptive digital works could also respond to changes in their surrounds dependent on time of day, light levels or the volume of passing crowds.

Conclusion

We cannot ‘opt out’ of a hypervisual culture, but we can subscribe to a more sensitive and creative vision of what public, transitory spaces could look like. This can incorporate diverse digital projects, with international, First Nations and other local artists already offering a huge range of works ripe for exhibition and sponsorship. We can alter experiences of place and transit using existing urban infrastructure and in doing so, bolster a culture of support for and investment in large scale public art. It is only through collaboration that this succeeds, for as sculptor Janet Echelman said, “public art [is] a team sport. The outcome is only possible with the interaction of all the players”.