Huge video projectors could reshape urban skylines.

Is the office building across the street looking a little blasé? High powered projectors can turn the side of any structure into a huge canvas for living art. Dynamic images cover enormous surfaces often with some really cool augmented reality overtones. We’ve seen some impressive displays of this technology in the past, but now a company out of the UK, LCI Productions, has given us some more videos to gawk at. With multiple groups able to transform massive walls into massively cool art shows, we may be seeing the beginning of a field that forever alters urban environments. Check out three cool videos of LCI’s work below.

We’ve previously seen building-sized projections in presentations by German group UrbanScreen. Like LCI, they too use powerful video projectors to put custom designed displays on large walls. No matter how you approach the concept the results are pretty consistent: large scale urban structures are imbued with crowd pleasing art. According to both LCI and UrbanScreen, each location requires its own special design so that images and buildings can be matched correctly. That means each project is one of a kind and a fairly big investment. There are simpler examples of the idea, however, such as writing with a high powered laser – a project described in the Graffiti Research Lab. That massive laser-pen can be setup quickly at almost any location. In the future, we may see both styles of urban projection transform buildings into massive video displays. That could mean a lot more cool art, but it will probably also lead to more advertisements. Buildings themselves could become huge billboards. Practical applications, like building-sized warnings for impending disasters or even just traffic delays, may show up as well. In any case it seems like our night-time environments are about to get much more colorful. I can’t wait.

The Marble Arch in London with some fun video projections:

That same arch with a calmer and more-attuned presentation:

A general overview of LCI’s work…some pretty cool stuff here:

[image credit: LCI Productions]
[video credit: LCI Productions, Mister Crazy Kid via YouTube]
[source: LCI-UK]

Say goodbye to boring buildings with art installations from Urbanscreen

If this trend catches on, we could see entire cities changed at night into evolving art spaces. With the sagging economy, artists are clamoring for grants and jobs…so why not combine that need with a little urban renewal? The Kunsthalle installation was based on the question: “What would a building dream?” That sounds esoteric, but the project came out very crowd-pleasing. A city-wide project might have the same great combination of artistic merit and public appeal. And it would certainly boost tourism.

But maybe that’s thinking too small. We’ve talked about Total Immersion’s Augmented Reality technology, and how it can combine recorded and synthetic images in real time. Mix AR with building-scale projectors and you could have a city with one foot in virtual reality. The creative potential is staggering. Of course we’ll probably see most buildings turned into billboards, but that might be a small price to pay to live in an interactive urban playground.

As far as I can tell, the technology is pretty basic: mammoth projectors, cameras, and hours upon hours of work on a computer. For all that effort, I’m surprised that the installation only lasted a short time. I might have left the thing up permanently. I should point out that Urbanscreen and the Kunsthalle installation are far from unique. Many artists have projected images onto 3D shapes before. Pablo Valbuena actually did a very similar installation in the Netherlands. As a general trend though, this is pretty cutting edge. And it looks awesome. What more do you want? I look forward to the possibility of traveling down my street and watching the buildings dream.