Interactive Art

Interactive Portals at LAX.

Public Art can be a hit or miss endeavor. More often than not it misses the mark for one reason or another, be it budgets, design by committee, to many cooks in the kitchen, what ever. Occasionally though it ends up being pretty impressive and true to the need of the commissioning group and the artists themselves.

Recently Los Angeles International Airport installed a series of large-scale, permanent public multimedia installations in the Tom Bradley terminal. The works were designed to enhance the spacial experience of travelers by bringing the architecture to life through the media features of the installations. Designed by Moment Factory the 16 unique responsive digital artworks are built to react to passenger movements with audio, video, sound effects and music being served up real-time in the space. I can’t wait until I fly in or out of LAX again so I can see these in person.

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The Sound of Taste. Grey London Creates a Musical Poster.

E-Ink isn’t really a new technology. Forms of it have been around for over a decade being used in some form of the print industry to create levels of mild interactivity. What I love about the video below is, Grey London and Herb & Spice brand Schwartz have combined it with your smartphone and Bluetooth to create a fresh interactive approach to a poster.  

The assignment was simple, the execution more complex, the result fantastic.  Illustrator Billie Jean was invited to create a visual articulation of what taste might look like. Starting with traditional media he painted the artwork for the poster. The illustration was then digitized, and divided into segments. Segments were printed with an electronic ink and coordinated to a smartphone app that talked to your mobile device using a Bluetooth connection. Your phone literally became the speaker for the poster. The result is a printed, interactive musical instrument.