Sensing Screens: From Surface to Situation

Abstract

Nanna Verhoeff considers recent screen-based public art installations that extend from their architectural site into surrounding urban space in order to engage techniques of ‘remote sensing’, interactivity, and public display. In these installations, Verhoeff identifies a genre of artwork that aims to raise awareness of urban social issues by visualizing and making ‘present’ otherwise invisible crises relating to the meeting of the social and the environmental. These installations compel one to look past the surface of the screen to its surrounding situation. Verhoeff thus reorients cinematic concepts of the dispositif towards a broader spectatorial territory, which she identifies by its building-scaled interfaces that reach beyond their location to remake, create, and influence the physical context by sensibly linking it to other, more distant spaces. Keywords: Dispositif, Locative Media, Space, Urban Screen, Spectatorship, Aesthetics