urban screens
Yesterday we heard a talk by Jan Edler of realities:united about urban screens. He discussed projects his company has realized. Today we heard a talk by Mirjam Struppek who studies urban screens. Both Edler and Struppek use urban screens for artistic purposes and not for advertising, although the majority of urban screens in the world are used solely for advertising purposes.
I have seen the most urban screens at one time in Times Square in New York. There are so many moving images there that when I stand still in the square I feel like I am moving as well.
Commercial urban screens are free entertainment with an agenda. Many people enjoy watching moving images, an thus almost everyone who walks by an urban screen will at least glance upwards when it flashes its message. Although video is used to create art, most often we associate video with entertainment. This is why the advertising on urban screens is successful: if the advertisement entertains the people who watch it, then they will associate the advertised product with entertainment and thus are more likely to purchase that product.
Urban screens make cities feel more electronic, more digital, and younger. They bring a youthful feeling to areas that otherwise would feel older. Yet I feel more comfortable in old areas of cities then I do in areas filled with lights and urban screens. Old areas of cities usually feel lived in and feel like someone’s home, even if they are not my home. But lit up areas feel like they belong to the advertisers and to the screens, and not to the people. Thus urban screens take the city away from the people and place it in the hands of corporations. But does this actually change a city? Do cities belong to the people who live there? the people who work there? the people who built it? the people who provided the money to build it? Or perhaps a city belongs to whoever claims that city as their own in their private mind. The facade of a city is public, but the heart and the life of a city lies in the hearts and the lives of its inhabitants and visitors.