7/6/2012

Harbor Islands Pavilion and BCEC Marquee on The Atlantic Cities website

Anthony Flint  writes about the video art programming on the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion and the BCEC Marquee on The Atlantic Cities website:

At the Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway, brightly lit screens beckon the late-night wanderer, long after the visitor center has closed. Take a closer look, and waves made by individual bar graphs appear, a bit like the sound readout on old stereo systems…. The electronic portrait is part of the burgeoning phenomenon of digital art, where the canvas is an LED screen. The visual muscle of digital art all but announces a potential transformation in public art in the city. It could make graffiti bombing and innovative artists like JR, with his giant eyes on the facades of the favelas, seem quaint by comparison….

The Boston Exhibition & Convention Center …  sought to announce its presence with an 80-foot electronic billboard illuminated by 2.8 million LED lights. The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority didn’t want just headlines for bio-tech or computer conventions, however, so designers started to explore what some public art would look like on the soaring structure. It looked really good, as it turned out….

Tim Love, a principal at Utile and designer of the Harbor Islands Pavilion and the marquee at the Convention Center, saw the place-making potential of large media screens – a way to present iconic contemporary design that engages public audiences.