Crossrail Art Programme: The Culture Line or transforming transport into global iconic art.

On Monday, 25th of March 2013, Europe’s biggest infrastructure project, Crossrail has appointed Futurecity to work in collaboration to develop a visionary transport network art programme. The Crossrail Art Programme will bring world-class artists together with international architecture and engineering teams to create a permanent line-wide art exhibition across eight new central and east London stations.

Crossrail, working in collaboration with Futurecity, unveils plans for a permanent line-wide exhibition across eight new London stations.
International artist Spencer Finch’s 120 metre long A Cloud Index to be built into Crossrail’s Paddington station.
London’s leading galleries assist in the global search for artwork that will inspire generations to come.

The Culture Line will colour the blank canvas of each station and create a cultural experience for passengers at Paddington, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Custom House, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street Crossrail stations.

Large-scale artworks will be permanently integrated into the new stations to deliver a vibrant transport experience for generations to come. The Culture Line is part of a wider focus to regenerate areas both within and around the new stations to improve passenger experience.

Crossrail and Futurecity are taking a unique step to work with eight of London’s leading commercial art galleries to assist in inviting world leading collaborative artists to submit proposals for the eight station installations. Crossrail’s stations will become art galleries showcasing large-scale artworks by some of the world’s most renowned artists, resulting in the largest collaborative art commissioning process in a generation.

Source: Futurecity

Extraordinary art installation by Studio Random International closes this week at the Barbican Museum in London. This spatial experience has been the talk of the town.

Famous for their characteristic approach to art, using experiments and a close collaboration with science,  Studio Random International creates art installations that come to life in interaction with the audience.

Based on the primordial tendency of men to control nature, situated in the London context where rain doesn’t create positive reactions – the installation managed to change the point of view of the visitors regarding rain, from trivial – a weather occurrence to a complex phenomena followed by artistic, psychological and social analysis.

This is the largest and most ambitious art installation Random International has done so far. Rain Room takes up a 100m2 field where a simulation of a rainstorm is performed, through which the visitors can walk and feel the experience of being able to control the rain.

The space that houses the installation is in shape of a curved tunnel, so the visitors at the very entrance here the sound of the rain and feel the humidity in the air, before they walk into a downpour that reacts to their presence and movement.

The first impression goes beyond all expectations and, like any superior work of art, immediately captures the visitor completely. The perfect rain with a strong background lighting shows and makes visible each and every drop of water while the people’s silhouettes and the boundaries of the space remain in the dark. The contrast between the light water drops and the dark space makes the whole experience more intense and spectacular.

After the visitor steps on the platform, an invisible magnetic field is formed around him and in this area the rain stops. Each silhouettes creates a perfect void around which the rain continues its downpour.

It took two years to develop a system with technical capabilities to simulate a real rainstorm in an interior space. The authors wanted the rain to seem absolutely authentic, so research was done about what a rain drop looks like, how it acts, at what speed does it fall and in which way can you create these exact drops inside an interior space only 4m high.

Once the rain is created, a system of 3D cameras and sensors was developed to capture the shape of bodies and three dimensional objects from the moment that walk into the installation, and follow their movement, stopping the water jets above the visitor and allowing him to remain dry while walking through very heavy rain.

The installation authors consider most interesting to watch people’s behavior inside the art installation field, that is the way in which they approach and enter the artificial rainstorm and move through it. In this way the installation investigates the behavior of the exhibition visitors – which are at the same time observers and objects of observation, pushing them out of their comfort zone and suggesting them to try something opposite to their instinctive reactions and intuition.

Each person experiences Rain room in their own way and leaves it with different impressions. After the initial shock, and depending of each visitor’s character, the sentiments of ecstasy, nostalgia, admiration, fear and freedom are mixed. However, the common impression of all visitors remains – that it was an astonishing unreal experience, beyond all expectations.

Ovaj postament, podignut sredinom XIX veka sa ciljem da se na njemu postavi uobičajena statua monarha na konju, a koji je sticajem različitih okolnosti ostao prazan, korišćen je na različite načine, da bi se već duže vreme na njemu smenjivale postavke dela savremene umetnosti.

U okruženju odmerenog klasicističkog nasleđa, skulpture koje se smenjuju na četvrtom postamentu uvek predstavljaju kulturni i prostorni incident, provokaciju, često na granici dobrog ukusa. Aktuelne predloge procenite sami – da li su izvanredni primeri savremenog umetničkog izraza i vešti prenosioci ključnih poruka, ili nemaštoviti i vulgarni odrazi potrošačkog društva.

Zvanični sajt programa The Fourth Plynth.