Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introducing Massive Media
- 2 Large-scale Projection and the (New) New Monumentality
- 3 Low-Resolution Media Façades in a Data Society
- 4 Curating Massive Media
- 5 When Buildings Become Screens
- About the Author
- List of Exhibitions, Films, Songs, Videos, and Installations
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
1 - Introducing Massive Media
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introducing Massive Media
- 2 Large-scale Projection and the (New) New Monumentality
- 3 Low-Resolution Media Façades in a Data Society
- 4 Curating Massive Media
- 5 When Buildings Become Screens
- About the Author
- List of Exhibitions, Films, Songs, Videos, and Installations
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
Summary
Abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of massive media, a term used to describe the emergence of large-scale public projections, urban screens, and led façades such as the illuminated tip of the Empire State Building. These technologies and the social and technical processes of image circulation and engagement that surround them essentially transform buildings into screens. This chapter also introduces theoretical concepts surrounding space, media, cinema, monumentality, and architecture in order to provide a framework for the analysis of the emergence of the building as screen. These concepts are key axes upon which the ongoing transformations of the public sphere revolve. Subsequent chapters are introduced in which massive media is probed, in case studies and creation-as-research projects, for its ability to enable new critical and creative practices of expanded cinema, public data visualisation, and installation art and curation that blend the logics of urban space, monumentality, and the public sphere with the aesthetics and affordances of digital information and the moving image.
Keywords: urban screens, led façades, architecture, public sphere, monumentality
From the Top
Toronto's CN Tower was built in 1976 as a telecommunications tower. The iconic building rises 553 metres above the city as an omnipresent reference point for anyone within a 20km radius. It dominates photos taken of the city and reflects the status and character of the city as relatively young and steeped in the architectural modernism of the era in which so much of it was built, simultaneously gesturing towards technologies and techniques as well as the past, present, and future visions of the city.
While the tower has always been prominently lit, it was not until 2007 that the building was fitted with programmable light-emitting diodes (leds). Its seemingly endless elevator shafts, cylindrical observation deck, and sharp antenna became illuminated and animated by a range of changing colours. Certain holidays, events, and causes were celebrated on the building by way of programming the patterns and colours of the lights. Deep runs into the playoffs by local sports teams were represented in team colours, the rare championship celebrated in gold tones, the deaths of fallen Canadian soldiers commemorated in patriotic reds and whites, and breast cancer awareness turned the tower bright pink once a year.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Building as ScreenA History, Theory, and Practice of Massive Media, pp. 11 - 48Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019