About the Talk:
DATE: Friday, December 2, 7pm | FREE admission
LOCATION: SFU Surrey (Westminster Savings Lecture Theatre). Central City complex at 13450 – 102 Avenue, just south of the Surrey Central SkyTrain station (look for the large office tower). For information on getting to SFU Surrey, including parking visit www.surrey.sfu.ca/maps_directions
ADMISSION: Free but seating is limited. Pre-register at artgallery@surrey.ca.
Screen installations, public projections, interactive facades and shop windows or networked communication-sculptures have emerged as a recent art form in the urban public space. They are a venue for creating new visual experiences and engaging cultures, as much as they might further the agendas of consumer culture.
Urban screens are a worldwide phenomenon. Once found only in large cities, they now appear in most urban centres. Their digital moving images can contribute to a lively urban society and global community building. But how do urban screens positively engage audiences and contribute to the experience of a civil society? What do they actually contribute to the character of their urban surroundings, and what is their potential for interaction and creating personal or shared experiences?
This presentation The Growing Global Phenomenon of Urban Screens will look at crucial issues such as rethinking content, ownership, infrastructure and the careful integration in the urban environment. International examples showcased in past Urban Screens and Media Facades festivals will be shared as experiments in this field of urban digital culture.
About Mirjam Struppek
Writing about the growing phenomenon of urban screens around the world, Berlin-based urban media researcher Mirjam Struppek states content driven urban screens hold the potential for “building community, sharing experiences, and ultimately, facilitating exchange within our diverse urban societies.”
Struppek works internationally as an urbanist, researcher and curator, and is the founder of the International Urban Screens Association www.urbanscreensassoc.org and co-initiator of the Media Facades Festivals 2008/2010. She has been instrumental in building the urban screens community through worldwide events, advocating the use of screens in public spaces for cultural content as well as site specific and interactive screening projects. For more information on Mirjam Struppek: www.interactionfield.de
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The event is being organized in conjunction with the Surrey Urban Screen exhibition: Electric Speed
Electric Speed is a group of commissioned works from Canadian media artists Jon Sasaki, Jeremy Bailey, Jillian McDonald, Will Gill, and Mouna Andraos & Melissa Mongiat. Organized by New Forms Media Arts Society and shown in two parts on Surrey Urban Screen, Electric Speed is curated by Malcolm Levy and Kate Armstrong. It is presented in conjunction with the McLuhan in Europe 2011 initiative celebrating the centennial birth year of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and is the only Canadian presentation of this international project.
Electric Speed: Part One opens Friday, December 2, 6pm at the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre and features a new interactive artwork by Melissa Mongiat & Mouna Andraos.
For more information: www.surreyurbanscreen.ca