Presented as part of Knot Project Space’s Video in the Public Sphere Speaker Series – a program of lectures that ran from October 2018 – April 2019. The series ran concurrently with a year-long public art commissioning program which culminated in the exhibition Knot Projections 2019: Imagining Publics featuring five large-scale outdoor video projections installed at four sites/surfaces throughout the city. The speaker series stimulated critical thinking during these commissions by bringing to Ottawa five national and international artists, curators and critics who were thinking through questions of publicness, site-specificity and civic engagement in their respective practices. Each delivered a talk in the project space and at times conducted follow-up seminars or workshops with the group of commissioned artists and other artists in the community. Each speaker also offered a reading list of texts related to their ongoing research.
The Public Sphere(s) of Massive Media
Dave Colangelo’s talk worked to describe, historicize, theorize, and examine various examples of “massive media,” an emerging subset of socio-technical assemblages that include large outdoor projections, programmable architectural façades, and urban screens. Massive media, such as the ever-changing LED-laden tip of the Empire State Building, the big screens of Yonge and Dundas square, and the dynamic projections on Parliament hill, are massive in their size and subsequent visibility, but are also an agglomeration of media in their expressive screen and cinema-like qualities and their associated audio, interactive, and network capabilities. What are the political implications of such agglomerations? How might these constitute or compliment a public sphere of experience and discourse? How can artists and citizens find ways to engage with these kinds of spaces critically and creatively?
Despite or perhaps because of the highly controlled and commercialized nature of this phenomenon, Colangelo argues that massive media necessitate the development of new critical spatial practices of expanded cinema, public data visualization, and new media art and curation. Through a lecture presentation and group discussion, this event examined and discussed works and tactics that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image to explore these possibilities. In what ways can ‘massive media’ support a more participatory, equitable, and inclusive public culture?
Dave Colangelo
Dave Colangelo is an artist, educator, and researcher based in Toronto, Canada. He is a founding member of Public Visualization Studio. His writing, research, and practice uses media architecture (urban screens, LED façades, and public projection) as a means to support critical and creative engagements with the city, public art, and information. He is currently Professor and Coordinator of the Bachelor of Digital Experience Design program in the in the School of Design at George Brown College, and Director, North America, of the Media Architecture Institute.
Related Programming
Workshop: The Space Around the Screen, Dave Colangelo. Oct. 26, 2018.