Public 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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21 Swings, an Art Installation.

This is public art worth talking about.

21 Swings is an art installation located in the high-traffic area in Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles. It features 21 musical swings that interact with the movement created by the person swinging on it. Each swing in motion triggers different notes, and all the swings together compose a unique piece of music. Some sounds and notes only emerge though when participants cooperate and sychronize movements. The piece was created by Mouna Andraos & Melissa Mongiat, with support from Quartier des spectacles de Montréal. I wish I had been in Montréal earlier this year to see and participate with 21 Swings.