Shantell Martin
The Oculus World Trade Center
New York City | 2020
We were thrilled to work with friend and collaborator Shantell Martin to bring her signature illustrations to life, animating her hand-drawn artwork for the large-format LED displays embedded throughout The Oculus and Westfield World Trade Center. The animations took over all 22 giant LED screens throughout the space at the same time, each showing a unique piece of content developed specifically for that space. At 280 feet long, the screen in the East-West Connector is one of the largest seamless video surfaces in the world.
Hosted and facilitated by
Art Production Fund as an artistic interruption to advertisements, the animations on the combined displays coalesced as an immersive video art experience, titled
Are You You. Shantell's words and phrases encouraged commuters and shoppers to take an inward look at identity and purpose. 'Who Are You?' 'Are You Who?' 'Are You You?' These questions framed by whimsical animated illustrations danced across the Westfield screens every 4-8 minutes throughout the month-long exhibition.
To create the experience, we captured Shantell's live drawings on a digital tablet, and animated those words and lines into unique compositions for every one of the 22 unique LED displays. We worked closely with Westfield and Art Production Fund to make sure that all of the compositions adhered perfectly to the massive-resolution content templates designed for the bespoke multi-display visual systems at Westfield World Trade Center.
