Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introducing Massive Media
- 2 Large-scale Projection and the (New) New Monumentality
- 3 Low-Resolution Media Façades in a Data Society
- 4 Curating Massive Media
- 5 When Buildings Become Screens
- About the Author
- List of Exhibitions, Films, Songs, Videos, and Installations
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
3 - Low-Resolution Media Façades in a Data Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introducing Massive Media
- 2 Large-scale Projection and the (New) New Monumentality
- 3 Low-Resolution Media Façades in a Data Society
- 4 Curating Massive Media
- 5 When Buildings Become Screens
- About the Author
- List of Exhibitions, Films, Songs, Videos, and Installations
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
Summary
Abstract
The highly visible and data-reactive low-resolution displays of buildings like Toronto's CN Tower or New York's Empire State Building shape the texture, tempo, and legibility of the urban experience, an experience that is produced (and consumed) in a unique combination of on and offline activity. I argue that these expressive surfaces increase the ambivalence and contingency of the ways we read (and write) the city, enabling the formation of temporary publics through public data visualisations that combine elements of democratised urbanism, critical debate, emotion, control, and commerce. Through historical research, social media analysis, and research-creation, this chapter focuses on the specific case of the Empire State Building and reports on the relationships between information, public space, and architecture that are sustained and supported by low-resolution, expressive architectural façades. The chapter ends with a discussion of the potential for artistic and activist uses of low-resolution digital architectural displays.
Keywords: media façades, media architecture, social media, digital culture, information aesthetics
This Building is on Fire
It certainly was not the first time New Yorkers saw flashing lights atop the Empire State Building; but, it was the first time the lights danced as they did, synchronised to Alicia Keys’ singing two of her songs, ‘Girl on Fire’ and ‘Empire State of Mind’, appropriately selected for the launch of the building's newly installed programmable LED lighting system. Amidst the ambient glow of the surrounding buildings, bright orange and red hues shifted to blue, purple, and yellow with the pulsating rhythm of the music. The colours mixed and faded into one another, rippling across the façade and rising up and down the antennae to Keys’ voice. As Megan Garber (2012) of The Atlantic described it, it was like ‘a fireworks show, with the illumination in question coming not from controlled explosions, but from controlled LEDS’. It was a firework-like show that in its apparent silence could be completely ignored or misinterpreted by thousands while remaining a formidable centre of attention for those who knew what to look and listen for by tuning in to the synchronised audio on a local radio station. Furthermore, the show rippled out into the night (and the days thereafter) on screens of those near and far via YouTube (see Figure 3-1), Instagram, and Twitter, and Facebook.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building as ScreenA History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media, pp. 99 - 132Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019