Union Square

A 6k generative art installation in New York

While working for the Portland Design Agency Parliament, we were tasked with creating a generative art concept for a client's flagship location opening in Union Square. Running 6k resolution and spanning two floors plus the ceiling, it was literally a huge feat.

Art Direction

The technical challenge of creating 6k content wasn't the focus of our efforts. Attracting people in Union Square who are used to putting on blinders because of media and ad saturation to slow down and stop for a few seconds was the real challenge.

We decided to do the opposite of what most do when fighting for attention. Instead of blasting high-contrast blinky things, we created slow-motion, calming visuals.

What did I do?

My role was to write the generative art system that delivered 6k content. I wrote a Processing app to continuously create visuals, and a controller to tweak them.

But it wasn't easy

One challenge was working with 6k content. The files are MASSIVE. We were filling a hard drive every other day!

I built some render modes into the controller that allowed us to rapidly render concepts in low-res. It was pretty amazing to walk in every day to a bunch of new content the system had made, and we would curate the concepts to a manageable set and then render them at high-res.

I want to see it

I'm super proud of the generative art we created. It's ambient art for a busy world. Next time you're in New York, check it out at Union Square!

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