These Urban Art Pieces Invite Connection With People and Place

Code:ART, an arts festival in Northern California, reimagines public spaces and brings people together

Annie Thornton June 14, 2017

Houzz Editorial Staff

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Palo Alto, California, where Houzz has its headquarters, is home to about 65,000 people. The population more than doubles each day with the influx of tech company employees, Stanford University students and others who add to the city’s social fabric. I am one of those who commute into Palo Alto each day, and I spend more time here than I do at home. And yet I feel as though I barely know the city.

This month I got a chance to know Palo Alto a little better as local artists transformed alleys, stairways, plazas and other downtown public spaces into interactive art pieces as part of a festival called Code:ART. The three-day festival, held in early June, aimed to reframe the city as a lab for “urban interventions and creative placemaking,” while engaging the diverse groups of people who converge on downtown Palo Alto daily. The installations, eight in total, invited people to slow down and connect with the spaces and people around them.

Janet Paik

Photos by Janet Paik

The city of Palo Alto launched Code:ART with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and local sponsors, including Houzz. Anyone was invited to submit a proposal to utilize an empty downtown public space in a way that channeled the spirit of the festival. With Palo Alto being a key Silicon Valley location, there was also a push for entries that celebrated innovation and incorporated technology.

Eight projects, including one semipermanent anchor piece, were selected from among 38 submitted by architects, designers, students and community members. All focus on innovation and technology.

Janet Paik

Murmur Wall
By Future Cities Lab

The Code:ART anchor installation, Murmur Wall, shown here and in the previous photo, reveals what people in the area are talking about on social media at any given moment. LED text displays inside 3D-printed data pods show trending social media hashtags pulled from a half-mile radius. As the hashtags run across the screens, everything from politics to sports pops up.

Additionally, anyone could interact directly with the piece by submitting anonymous “whispers” to the wall through its website. These lines of text appeared almost instantly on the display screens in bright white lights.

Murmur Wall will remain on display in front of City Hall in Palo Alto until October.

Janet Paik

Safe and Sound
By Tomo Saito

Safe and Sound was an interactive sound installation by Tomo Saito, shown here, that relied on the collaboration of passersby. Eight chairs were positioned in a circle in the plaza in front of City Hall, one of the city’s busier pedestrian areas, with a track of music assigned to each chair. Whenever someone sat in a chair, the track was programmed to play. When all the chairs were filled, the full composition could be enjoyed.

Janet Paik

StreetTALK
By Erik Adigard and Patricia McShane of M-A-D

StreetTALK, a participatory piece by designers Erik Adigard and Patricia McShane, asked visitors to share their visions for the city, and their ideas gave the installation its physical shape. Blank sticky notes in various shapes were left so that anyone could write down one feature of their dream city and then stick the note on a cardboard panel outside of the city’s Building Division office.

Janet Paik

What started as an empty sheet of cardboard on the first day of the festival evolved into an organic shape composed of colorful notes and drawings from community members of all ages. Everything from “acceptance,” to “affordable housing” and “live music” made the board. Even pedestrians who might not contribute to the piece could stop to read what others around them envisioned.

Janet Paik

Sensory Garden
By Elaine Uang, Sandra Slater and Megan Stevens

Our senses are inundated every day, interacting with so many sights, sounds and more. With Sensory Garden, Elaine Uang, Sandra Slater and Megan Stevens hoped to reclaim a feeling of calm wonder and delight through the senses. The installation was designed to touch all senses and — as Slater, shown here, said when she was describing the installation — “take you out of your phone.”

The installation filled an alleyway between a bookstore and newsstand. Bell harps triggered by sensors near visitors’ feet created a soft chiming cascade, and bluebells drawn with chalk on the alley walls added visual delight by day, while string lights delighted and added safety at night. Moss and other soft materials installed in the alley’s unused phone booths added something to touch, while flowing jasmine vines provided an intoxicating scent. Fresh herbs or lollipops were on hand to be enjoyed, together transforming an often-used walkway into a sensory journey.

Janet Paik

Feng Shui: Flow of Energy
By Mateo Garcia

Occupying a staircase in one of the city’s busy parking garages was Feng Shui: Flow of Energy, by Mateo Garcia. The Stanford University student suspended strings of LED lights along the railings of the garage, activating the lights through his laptop in a sequence that represented the flow of light and energy from the sun to the earth.

Janet Paik

Architectural Pavilion
By Kyu Kim and Hanna Joo

This installation by a local architect and an interior designer also transformed an underutilized alleyway. Kyu Kim and Hanna Joo, the design team behind Architectural Pavilion, collaborated with Green Waste, the city’s waste and recycling center, stacking hundreds of small recycling bins with zip ties to create a serpentine form that ebbed and flowed through the alley. At the end of the three-day event, the installation was disassembled and the bins given to local residents to use for recycling.

Janet Paik

Kim, shown here, said he and Joo wanted to repeat a common item, such as a bunch of recycling bins, to create something visually appealing. The bins also highlight the environmental responsibility that unites us and is critical for the future of our cities.

Janet Paik

The Ghost in the Machine
By Ben Flatau

Ben Flatau, who works as an architect in Palo Alto, transformed an open walkway into a colorful arcade using more than 1,300 acrylic triangles held together by more than 8,000 zip ties. Sensors and motors worked together to manipulate the span of the covering, raising and lowering various parts of the ceiling in response to people under it.

The Ghost in the Machine was designed as a dialogue between pedestrians and their actions, as sensors on one side of the pavilion activated motors in the ceiling on the other side. Though someone might not know the person activating the ceiling movement above, the movement connected the two of them. An unintended side effect of the project was the beautiful color patterns that the triangles created on the ground.

Janet Paik

Caustic Chasm
By Rose Aspitz, Autumn Austin and Devon Meyers

Caustic Chasm sparkled like a jewel in the center of another public plaza. This installation captured the city’s abundant sunshine with a design that played with light to create beautiful colors not only on the structure itself but also on the ground.

The colors and patterns changed as the sun did, evolving throughout the day. Instead of walking by or through the plaza, pedestrians could stop and watch the light show, lingering just a little longer than they might normally.

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