“The Living
Street Art”
is a 40-foot-long
kinetic canvas
featuring “Pinch” and
a collection of
“fairy tale monsters”
Chicago-based video production company Banner Collective unveiled its latest creation for the lobby wall in Google’s Fulton Market office yesterday.
Titled, The Living Street Art, the animated piece features work by Chicago artists Elloo and Penny Pinch. Lighting up the 40-foot, 42-screen installation on the company’s northern wall, it is a kinetic canvas that combines unique characters and an animated Chicago streetscape.
The effect is a dynamic view of the Windy City enhanced by distinct styles that toggle between Anime and Where the Wild Things Are kind of moods. Running on a five-minute loop and displaying more than 87 million pixels per frame, the content underscores Banner’s mission to celebrate Chicago’s “electic artistic footprint” by featuring the work of commissioned local artists.
The featured artists
Elloo is a Pilsen native who has created a “fairy tale monster universe” that helps her “understand the world around her,” according to a description from Galerie F in Logan Square. Penny Pinch is “street artist who works entirely with free and found materials.” His signature character, “Pinch,” appears throughout the city on wheatpaste posters and stickers.
With their visual inspirations, Banner “brings Chicago to life using a number of cinematic and graphic techniques.”
A glimpse of the Google lobby wall
The backstory
Besides transforming Google’s lobby into a nice place to be, The Living Street Art also reinforces Banner’s knack for keeping things interesting. The third piece of content created for the location, it is entirely different from its predecessors.
Voxel, the inaugural video, featured bitmapped neighborhoods and buildings in rich colors that looked straight out of an old version of Sim City. Ethos, which ran until yesterday, featured brightly colored geometric designs layered over a tour of Chicago landmarks.
“It’s a 40-foot-wide screen, so there’s a lot of real estate,” says Banner President Patrick Dahl. “You can look at it from one place and have a totally different perspective than if you walk five feet away, so it’s a really fun project.”
Since the beginning, the videos have also contained Easter Eggs and other goodies highlighting Chicago’s distinct regions and neighborhoods.
Items appeared in the reflection of Cloud Gate (The Bean) in Ethos. Locations like Wrigley Field, the Aragon Ballroom, and even the gone-but-not-forgotten Wax Trax storefront showed up in the Voxel visuals of the city’s north side. The treats woven within The Living Street Art will reveal themselves when the time is right.
CREDITS
Creative Agency: Banner Collective
Art Director: Aaron Asbury
Street Artists: Elloo and Penny Pinch
Character Animation: Matea Lo
Motion Graphics: Aaron Asbury, Jessica Conquest, Matea Lo
Cinematography: Matthew Dominick, Alex Hocking
Producer: Cassandra Shapiro
Photography: Jeremy Bloom
Send your new work to Reel Chicago Editor Dan Patton, dan@reelchicago.com.
