Insight Into Creating Public Art Works

Last week Americans for the Arts had a blog salon covering lessons learned from public art projects. As a person who is always interested in the process people went through to execute their project, I read many of the entries with great interest.

Two stood out for me. The first was Jessica Witte’s discussion of how she got people involved with the creation of an intricate 400 foot long seed drawing near the St. Louis Arch. She gave examples of how previous works lead to the project and then how she executed the project.

I appreciated that she mentioned the different considerations that went into the project. Things like chalking out the design the night before are pretty obvious but she also discusses how she made sure there was water, picnic tables and food trucks available to encourage people to linger and explore.

She also reached out to non-profits whose mission aligned with the project early in the planning stage which she noted will constitute a network of advisors and assistance for future projects.

She hired Art Ambassadors to help her welcome people, explain the project and encourage them to join in. Part of this effort also involved crowdsourcing the documentation of the project.

Throughout, she reflects on how she would improve the project for the next time.  I appreciated all the detail as a resource of things to consider if doing a similar type project.

The other entry I liked was Daily Tour les jours’ post about how they prototyped the Musical Shadows installation in Mesa, AZ. I may have posted on the project before, but I can’t find the entry. Here is a video of the final result:

Again, for me learning about the process was interesting. I would never have imagined that an early stage involved placing post it notes on the ground of a concrete plaza in order to get some initial feedback about the concept from people.

There is a short video of them using a piece of paper on the end of a cordless drill to help make a shadow over their sensors. That apparently helped them determine “the spacing of the sensors would have a large impact on the interaction, and forced us to begin considering different sensor layouts”.

Then there was field testing of various types including getting feedback from people about what sounds worked best. In total, they list eight different prototypes before delivery.

This entry made me appreciate just how much work goes into projects like this. Embedded in that are lessons about failure and revision that are valuable to remember.

I hope you will explore the entries a bit more and even take a look at the whole salon since there is likely something in there that will impress you in ways that didn’t strike me.