Arizona State University Professor Creates City Hall’s Digital Art

Arizona State University Professor Ana Herruzo will contribute to Mesa’s City Hall renovations with her digital art. Overall, Heruzzo received a portion of a $175,000 grant to produce digital artwork for the City Hall foyer. This art installation will produce dynamic images by utilizing local data. The $30 million building will house a large amount of brilliant, partially computer-powered art, totaling $680,000.

Excellent quality monitors and LED lighting will be important sources of illumination. Even the more conventional sculpture aims to lit up at night, contributing to the city plaza’s transformation into a brilliant length of Main Street. The MIX Centre at Arizona State University is providing new media specialists who are integrating cutting-edge technology into the municipal hall’s design.

The goal is to create “live art”, which refers to constantly shifting images that depict the state of the city in real time. Ana Herruzo, an ASU assistant professor located in Mesa, is working on interactive digital artwork for a 16-by-8-foot digital display. That work will advance technological capabilities. Also, the limits of what constitutes to fall under art.

Thanks to Herruzo, the new municipal hall could assist progress the developing discipline of fusing architecture with the digital world. The high-tech artwork complements the downtown “arts and innovation district” plan put out by local officials. It will also help give the city hall a striking appearance at night. The architects inserted programmable LEDs in the building’s architecture, but municipal officials are also looking to public art to add a nighttime flare.

Humanizing Art

In September, an eight-person committee chose five finalists to produce works for four different parts of the city hall site. Some of the items may not look exactly as they will in the end because the panel is now working with the artists to finalise designs by February. Heruzzo’s piece “Sentient Resonance” will display dynamic images in the lobby. It will also represent data created in real time by the surrounding environment.

The digital lobby art was originally set to cost $100,000. But, Mesa increased the budget to $175,000 so it could include visuals from both Herruzo’s ASU team and Brooklyn-based Volvox Studios. The proposal describes the work as “the fusion of generative content, real-time content and rendered visualizations creating a cohesive ecosystem of informative and awe-inspiring art for visitors of the Mesa City Hall”.

Eventually, Herrruzo wants to use weather stations built in her MIX Center lab and mounted on the building to feed the digital art. “Sentient Resonance” will never look exactly the same way twice, making it what Herruzo called “a live piece of art”. “The whole point is creating architecture (that is) alive and sort of humanizing it in a way”, she said.