UCA professor lights up New York's Times Square
The bright lights of New York's famous Times Square are exploding with a piece of video art created by a professor from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA).
A dozen of the huge LED advertising screens that surround the landmark's skyscrapers, are co-ordinating for the first time to bring digital art to millions of people every day.
The art project, by the Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC), launched on 1 April 2012 with Big Bang 01 by UCA Rochester's Professor of Photography, Ori Gersht.
Professor Ori Gersht said: "The opportunity to show my work on the LCD screens in Times Square is a unique and rare opportunity.
"Presenting my work to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of viewers, in this unique context is a very special experience. It expands the work beyond my original intentions and I hope that it will provide an unpredictable and very exciting experience for passers-by who might not usually be interested in art.
"Big Bang, was an attempt to investigate the relationships between film, technology and optical perception at a pivotal moment in the history of art where digital technology both threatens a crisis and promises a breakthrough.
"I do not believe that there is anything more symbolically representative of current projection technologies than the epic display panels in Times Square. The scale and intensity of the presentation will enhance the dichotomies between past and present."
Times Square Moment: A Digital Gallery aims to bring creativity, energy and cutting-edge graphics and digital art to one of the world's centres of communication.
Alan High, chairman of the TSAC, said: "The spectacular digital screens of Times Square provide the world's most exciting canvas on which to present creative content.
"This is the first time that multiple screens have dedicated time to displaying such content simultaneously, and we believe the impact will be exhilarating."
Professor Gersht's artwork will be shown at 11.57pm every night until 1 May 2012 when experimental artist Robert Wilson takes over.
Israeli-born Ori Gersht, who has been a Professor at UCA since 2006, added: "Big Bang captures an explosion - an instantaneous moment of transition, a shift that is happening at a speed that is too fast for the human eye and brain to perceive.
"This attempt to meditate the passage of time is particularly interesting to me in relation to the Midnight Moment at Time Square when the film will mark the beginning and ending of each day - the metaphysical transition from one day to the next from one state of consciousness to another."
For more information contact:
David Reilly, Press Officer, UCA
T: 01252 892939
E: dreilly@ucreative.ac.uk
