Surrey Urban Screen
Surrey Urban Screen—located on the west wall of Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre, 13458-107A Avenue—is an outreach venue of the Surrey Art Gallery. The venue is Canada's largest permanent, non-commercial outdoor urban screen. It can be viewed from SkyTrain between Gateway and Surrey Central stations.
Find out more about Surrey Art Gallery Exhibitions
Interested in proposing an artwork for Surrey Urban Screen?
The Surrey Art Gallery receives and reviews proposals for exhibitions at Surrey Urban Screen. You can look at the Gallery's information on making a proposal here: Call for Proposals.
Current Exhibition
Electric Speed
Mona Andraos & Melissa Mongiat, Jeremy Bailey, Will Gil, Jillian McDonald, Jon Sasaki
December 2 to March 31, 2012
Electric Speed is presented in conjunction with the McLuhan in Europe 2011 initiative http://mcluhan2011.eu/ celebrating the centennial birth year of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and is the only Canadian presentation of this international project.
According to the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan, speed is of radical effect, having an impact on everything from how we understand notions of centre and how we experience physical space to how our senses operate in an era of communication technology. Through speed, distance contracts, producing a simultaneous global present and the famous concept of the "global village". At the same time, our contemporary moment finds a place for the critique of speed and technology, for asking what is too fast, and where we might find modes in which to be slow.
Artists in Electric Speed were invited to create work that questions the existence of a simultaneous global culture and examines how accelerated culture affects our experience of time and space. The artworks can be viewed at Surrey Urban Screen, as well as previewed on the website www.electricspeed.ca.
Part One: December 2, 2011 to January 15, 2012
Features the work Rewrite the Year, by Montreal based artists Melissa Mongiat & Mouna Andraos | Read more about this artwork: Rewrite the Year pdf | www.rewritetheyear.com
Part Two: January 28, 2012 to March 31, 2012
Features the work of Jeremy Bailey, Jillian McDonald, Jon Sasaki, and Will Gill | Read more about these artworks: Electric Speed Part Two pdf
Features the work of Jeremy Bailey, Jillian McDonald, Jon Sasaki, and Will Gill | Read more about these artworks: Electric Speed Part Two pdf
In Explore the Future of Creativity, Jeremy Bailey produces a multi-level advertising campaign for himself as a "famous new media artist," using the large scale surface of the Surrey Urban Screen in conjunction with google ads and paid promotion on YouTube as a way to critique the role of the artist in a radically commercial, global sphere. With Hunger, Jillian McDonald is locked in a staring contest with famous vampires from films such as Twilight, inserting herself into a dialogue with popular culture and raising questions about the position of the consuming subject and the speed of desire. In Gravity, Jon Sasaki considers speed in the context of a daredevil culture, raising the spectre of radical collapse by filming a motorcyclist in slow motion on the vertical track of a "Wall of Death" motordrome. With Firefly, Will Gill uses a bow and arrow to shoot glowsticks across placid Newfoundland landscapes, producing mysterious bolts of light that are associative of an information-permeated world.
A publication has been produced in connection with the exhibition, co-published by the Surrey Art Gallery and the New Forms Media Society, edited by Kate Armstrong with contributions by Caitlin Jones, Sylvie Parent, Mirjam Struppek, Steve Dietz, Garnet Hertz, Justin Waddell, Greg J. Smith, and The Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonorealistes.
Image: Jon Sasaki, Gravity (2011), video still. Courtesy of the artist.
Upcoming Event
Conversation with Electric Speed Part Two Artists | Saturday, January 28, 2012 3:30pm
Part Two Opening Reception and Publication Launch to follow at 5pm
Meet the artists as well as the Electric Speed curators and participate in a conversation about their artwork and the exhibition.
These events are free and are at the Surrey Urban Screen venue at Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre (13458 - 107A Avenue Surrey, BC V3T 0G4)
Past Event
Public Talk with Mirjam Struppek
December 2, 7pm at SFU Surrey (Westminster Savings Lecture Theatre)
Urban Screens and City Building
Screen installations, public projections, interactive facades and shop windows or networked communication-sculptures have emerged as a recent art form in the urban public space. They are a venue for creating new visual experiences and engaging cultures, as much as they might further the agendas of consumer culture.
Urban screens are a worldwide phenomenon. Once found only in large cities, they now appear in most urban centres. Their digital moving images can contribute to a lively urban society and global community building. But how do urban screens positively engage audiences and contribute to the experience of a civil society? What do they actually contribute to the character of their urban surroundings, and what is their potential for interaction and creating personal or shared experiences?
This presentation The Growing Global Phenomenon of Urban Screens will look at crucial issues such as rethinking content, ownership, infrastructure and the careful integration in the urban environment. International examples showcased in past Urban Screens and Media Facades festivals will be shared as experiments in this field of urban digital culture.
About Mirjam Struppek
Writing about the growing phenomenon of urban screens around the world, Berlin-based urban media researcher Mirjam Struppek states content driven urban screens hold the potential for "building community, sharing experiences, and ultimately, facilitating exchange within our diverse urban societies."
Berlin-based Struppek works internationally as an urbanist, researcher and curator, and is the founder of the International Urban Screens Association www.urbanscreensassoc.org and co-initiator of the Media Facades Festivals 2008/2010. She has been instrumental in building the urban screens community through worldwide events, advocating the use of screens in public spaces for cultural content as well as site specific and interactive screening projects. For more information on Mirjam Struppek: www.interactionfield.de
Past Exhibitions
Fiction Façade
Urban Visuals (Konstantinos Mavromichalis & Nathan Whitford)
August 26 to November 20, 2011
Video documentation on youtube channel
Fiction Façade, created by Urban Visuals (Konstantinos Mavromichalis & Nathan Whitford), is a digital animation artwork activated by your interaction. It generates sequences similar to arcade games like pinball. Abstract geometric shapes and patterns respond to the architectural features of the west wall of the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre. They bounce off window perimeters, explore surface areas of the building skin, and appear to get stuck where there is no space available to let them out. Fiction Façade also comes with a soundscape informed by 8 bit video games. Tune into FM 89.9 on your MP3 player or car stereo when you are in front of the artwork.
Image: Urban Visuals (Konstantinos Mavromichalis & Nathan Whitford), Fiction Façade (2011), installation image. Courtesy of the artists, photographed by Brian Giebelhaus.
Transience
Flicker Art Media (Aleksandra Dulic & Kenneth Newby)
September 18 to April 30, 2011
Transience Handout
Video and still photo documentation of Transience
Commuters and residents will see and hear animated images and sounds come and go, as the SkyTrain passes by Surrey Urban Screen. This interactive public artwork created by Flicker Art Media (Aleksandra Dulic & Kenneth Newby) is activated by the passing trains, and the imagery references the diversity of those travelling by transit in the Lower Mainland.
Unlike other large outdoor screens, Surrey's Urban Screen presents a soundtrack for its imagery. Anticipate ambient and orchestral sounds of raindrops, gamelan gongs, prepared piano notes in John Cage-style (based on the emotions of the rasa Indian tradition), and you will want to tune into the artwork at FM 89.9 when you are nearby using your car stereo or MP3 player.
Images above: Flicker Art Media (Aleksandra Dulic & Kenneth Newby), Transience (2010), installation image. Courtesy of the artists, photographed by Sharon Doucette.
Glocal
Sylvia Grace Borda, M. Simon Levin, Dennis Rosenfeld, Jer Thorp
February 11 to April 30, 2010
Surrey Urban Screen presents Glocal, a digital artwork that reconfigures the exterior architecture of the newly completed Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre into a generative façade.
Glocal draws from a database of over 50, 000 images contributed by people from all over the world.