Futuristic art will make new city hall beam

Jan. 22—The art planned for the Mesa's new city hall building is not your grandfather's public art.

Much of the $680,000 art in and around the $30 million building will be luminous and some of it powered by computers.

Light emanating from LEDs and high-resolution screens will be a key medium, and even the more traditional sculpture is meant to be illuminated at night, helping to make the city plaza a radiant stretch of Main Street.

With the LED-studded Media and Immersive eXperience Center nearby, the block might feel a bit like a piece of Las Vegas or Times Square after the new city hall is completed in September.

New media experts from Arizona State University's MIX Center are helping inject high-tech wizardry into the city hall's decor, creating what one team described as "live art" — ever changing visuals that reflect real-time conditions in the city.

Ana Herruzo, an ASU assistant professor based in Mesa, is collaborating on the live digital art planned for a 16- by 8-foot digital display in the city hall lobby.

That work will push the limits of technology — and maybe the boundaries of what is considered art.

Herruzo previously worked as an engineer for Obscura Digital, later acquired by Madison Square Garden, and creator of the Las Vegas "Sphere," a massive, $2 billion globe covered inside and out with LEDs.

Thanks to Herruzo, the new city hall may help advance the burgeoning field of melding architecture with the digital world.

A deputy city manager said last year that the theme of the glass-heavy structure designed by Adaptive Architects is "transparency" and "jewel in the desert."

The high-tech art meshes with city leaders' "arts and innovation district" vision for downtown, but it will also help give the city hall a striking appearance at night.

The building architects included programmable LEDs in the building's design, but city officials are also looking to the public art to give it a night-time pop.

The city stipulated artwork with a night-time presence in a Request for Qualifications issued by the Mesa Arts Center last year. The city received 75 applications.

In September, an eight-person panel selected five winners to create pieces in four areas of the city hall campus.

The panel is currently working with the artists to finalize designs by February, so the final look of some of the pieces could change.

'Living' art

During a study session on the city hall art program last month, City Manager Chris Brady and MAC Events Manager Kevin Vaughan-Brubaker seemed most excited about the digital art project by Herruzo and her collaborator Dr. Weidi Zhang.

Called "Sentient Resonance," the piece will present ever-changing visuals in the lobby that reflect real-time data generated by the local environment and, eventually, the community and city government operations.

The digital lobby art was originally set to cost $100,000, but Mesa increased the budget to $175,000 so it could include visuals from both Herruzo's ASU team and Brooklyn-based Volvox Studios.

Vaughan-Brubaker said the panel appreciated the polish of Volvox Studios' pitch, but they were also excited about ASU's proposal to incorporate local data and partner with Mesa community groups.

For ASU's contribution, live information about environmental conditions like humidity and temperature will be fed into a computer and the data influences the images produced. The images could eventually reflect things like Salt River flows, trees planted or building permits issued.

The proposal describes the work as "the fusion of generative content, real-time content and rendered visualizations creating a cohesive ecosystem of informative and awe-inspiring art for visitors of the Mesa City Hall."

Herruzo and Zhang, also a faculty member at MIX Center, are partnering with Chandler-based Ambient Weather to access Mesa weather data.

Eventually, Herrruzo wants to use weather stations built in her MIX Center lab and mounted on the building to feed the digital art.

"Sentient Resonance" will never look exactly the same way twice, making it what Herruzo called "a live piece of art."

"The whole point is creating architecture (that is) alive and sort of humanizing it in a way," she said.

"So, if the weather becomes aggressive, maybe the visuals are also aggressive. It's not necessarily all the time just this beautiful thing. Maybe sometimes it just impacts you — because the environment is impacting you."

But Herruzo noted that the end product is supposed to be gorgeous, a "visual symphony of real-time data," according to the proposal.

The "Sentient Resonance" proposal calls for ASU graduate students to create and exhibit Mesa-based data visualizations annually.

Air pollution into art

Herruzo described a project by one of her students, Henry Beach, that used Mesa air pollution levels. It represented air quality over various parts of the city with colored clouds corresponding to different levels of particulates.

She said she wants to collaborate with community groups that may be interested in contributing data to the project.

Heruzzo said "Sentient Resonance" requires mega computing power to generate high-resolution, 3D images with every frame.

Unlike most works of art, this piece requires massive servers and powerful graphics cards to create the images.

"This computer has to render the whole scene every second all the time," Herruzo said.

The proposal also teases the eventual incorporation of artificial intelligence.

"After amassing a significant amount of data over time, the building will start to showcase its insights, weaving them into the displayed graphics," it states.

Asked if she considers herself an artist, Herruzo said, "it's complicated." She's an artist, a technologist, a programmer, a researcher, she said.

Herruzo sees "Sentient Resonance" as helping to pioneer a new way of doing architecture, which uses digital "skins" on buildings to forge greater connections between buildings and communities.

Other art

The city selected San Francisco-based Digital Ambiance to create an outdoor "multimedia sculpture" set in a 75-foot planter fronting the city plaza building.

The $250,000 award calls for a sculpture that will fit into the surrounding native plants and "have exciting lighting elements for nighttime presence," Vaughan-Brubaker said.

Digital Ambiance says it specializes in creating sculptures with "embedded custom-LEDs and video displays, and ... software to create mesmerizing generative and figurative interactive content."

Vaughan-Brubaker said the idea was for the outdoor art to complement the MIX Center aesthetic.

As of press time, the city was still working with Digital Ambiance on the final design.

In a statement to the Tribune, Digital Ambiance said the installation "will be inspired by Mesa's rich natural landscape and incorporate cutting-edge technology in its construction and presentation."

A spokesman said that multidisciplinary artist Adrian Yu would be collaborating on the project.

Yu created a kaleidoscopic project for Art Basel in Miami 2022 called "Nucleus." It was a huge mirrored orb inside a polyhedron that presented an interactive psychedelic light display at night.

The other major artwork is a $250,000 interior sculpture by Santa Fe artist Will Clift.

This massive curving sculpture will be visible from outside city hall and will be lit up to have a night-time presence.

In Clift's proposal, one part of the sculpture will rise from the base of the grand staircase leading to the council chambers, and the second piece will be suspended above.

The artist said the piece would create a visual connection between the more public first floor and more official second floor, where the council chambers are located.

The new city hall will also include a huge image of Red Mountain rendered by perforations in a metal wall.

The art panel selected an image of Red Mountain taken by Mesa photographer Kerrick James.

His work has appeared in advertising campaigns and magazines, including Arizona Highways.

The city paid $5,000 for the photo.