The artists

So far, the following artists and arts groups have been selected:

greyworld (Burnley site)
Jaume Plensa (St Helens site)
muf (Newham site)
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Cardigan site)

greyworld

'For centuries public art has meant monuments of bronzed warriors or controversial sculptures that were more often reviled than admired. Greyworld is trying to change all that, using its imaginative installations to transform the world's dreary urban areas. You've been warned: expect the unexpected. If an elevator starts playing show tunes or a water fountain compliments you on your outfit, don't freak out – it's only art.' Tara Pepper, Newsweek, 2004

Monument to the Unknown Artist, Bankside, London (2007). The property developer Land Securities commissioned greyworld for their Bankside 123 development. Using animatronics, the apparently traditionally sculpted figure mischievously changes its pose in response to the viewer's own position

The arts group greyworld, which won the Big Art Project commission for Burnley, is the creation of Andrew Shoben. Founded in Paris in 1993, the group describes its goal as 'to create works that articulate public spaces, allowing some form of self-expression in areas of the city that people see every day but normally exclude and ignore'.

Bins and Benches, installation view, outside the Junction Theatre, Cambridge (2005)

Shoben, who has recently become Professor of Public Art and Computation at Goldsmiths University, London, describes himself as the group's 'enlightened dictator'. He first became involved in the arts world when he made the move from composing contemporary dance music to developing aural installations for public spaces.

One of Shoben's first projects, in 1995, involved the use of recordings of platform announcements and the noises of train arrivals and departures to recreate the atmosphere of the golden age of the railways at Fontenay station, in France, which had not seen a real passenger train for 25 years. The sounds were broadcast in response to members of the public buying tickets to imaginary destinations on a utopian railway service.

Bins and Benches, 'interviewed' outside the Junction Theatre, Cambridge (2005)

Subsequent works have ranged from railings tuned to play The Girl From Ipanema to public benches that generate a sound environment evoking an imaginary life lived out on them. In Cambridge, in 2005, five bins and four benches were 'injected with a magic serum of life so that they can break free from their staid and fixed positions to roam free in a public square'. Each bin or bench was given its own personality and impulses: 'If it's raining, a bench may decide to park up under a tree waiting for someone to sit on it; whilst on a Wednesday the bins will line up waiting to be emptied. Occasionally, they will all burst into song with the bins forming a baritone barbershop quintet and the benches a high soprano choir.'

Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Dublin (2000). Sensors in the carpet responded to footsteps, generating unexpected sounds and melodies

The Layer, an installation on Dublin's Millennium Bridge, involved covering the bridge with a blue carpet. Sensors underneath reacted to people's footsteps, detecting movement and producing sounds such as splashing through water or crunching through snow. 'It's very simple,' said Andrew Shoben in an interview with Landscape Journal. 'They are interfaces to creation which are very direct and they are very cause-and-effect. My mum would understand that: she puts her foot down and it causes a sound.'

Underlying all of greyworld's work is the desire to put the public at the centre of public art – to make work that requires participation. Not for them is the 'keep off', 'do not touch' mentality of the traditional bronze statue or public space. The works are playful and humorous, with a constant eye for the unexpected, making people think about the environment in which they live, work and play in ways that challenge assumptions.

Railings, installed in Paris and London (Paris, 1997)

Talking of the work Railings, Andrew Shoben told Landscape Journal: 'As a definition of greyworld's work, I think it is pretty close to what I want it to be. It's still a set of railings and you can still chain your bike to it.'

For more about greyworld's work for the Big Art Project, see Latest news.

Greyworld's website is at www.greyworld.org.

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Jaume Plensa

Crown Fountain, Millennium Park, Chicago, USA (2000). Commissioned by Public Art Program, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Chicago with support of Henry Crown and Company

Born in Barcelona in 1955, the Catalan artist and sculptor Jaume Plensa, who has been chosen by the local community for the Big Art Project at the St Helens site, has an international reputation for major public art projects. His outdoor work can be seen in locations including the US, Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Korea and the UK, as well as in his home country.

Crown Fountain, Millennium Park, Chicago, USA (2000). Commissioned by Public Art Program, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Chicago with support of Henry Crown and Company

Plensa is perhaps best known for Crown Fountain, a monumental and very popular public sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago. The work comprises twin 15-metre towers facing each other across a thin sheet of water that forms a 70-metre 'pool' level with the adjacent walkways. Children and adults can splash across the water, while video portraits made from the faces of more than 1,000 Chicago residents are projected on LED displays behind the glass blocks of which the towers are built. Every 12 minutes a spout of water emerges from the mouth of a projected face before the image disappears in a shower of water.

Blake in Gateshead, Baltic Center of Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (1996). Commissioned by the Metropolitan Borough Council Libraries and Arts, Gateshead, for the project Temporary Contemporary, Visual Arts Year, UK

This engagement with more than one of a spectator's senses, and the encouragement of active, tactile exploration of an artwork, is typical of Plensa's work, as is the combination of technological sophistication and a lively urban exuberance. Blake in Gateshead, a laser installation which for the past decade has illuminated the night sky over Gateshead's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, provides another example of this approach.

While Barcelona remains his home and base, Plensa has lived and worked in a number of other countries, including England, at the invitation of the Henry Moore Foundation, and France, at the invitation of the Atelier Alexander Calder. He is the winner of various national and international awards, including the Medaille des Chevaliers des Arts et Lettres from France's Minister of Culture in 1993, and he has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe, north America and Japan.

Breathing (2004-2008). Memorial to news journalists around the world who have lost their lives. The sculpture will project a light-beam 900 metres into night sky form the new BBC Broadcasting House complex, London, UK. Commissioned by BBC Broadcasting House

Over the past decade Plensa has also worked on stage and costume design for major opera productions. These include Falla's Atlantida in Granada; The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz in Salzburg's Festspiele; and, Mozart's The Magic Flute for the Ruhr Triennale. His most recent public work in the UK is a spectacular illuminated sculpture for the BBC's Broadcasting House in London.

For more about Jaume Plensa's work for the Big Art Project, see Latest news.

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muf

Dale Community Primary School, Derby (2006-8). Client: Creative Partnerships

'Access is understood not as a concession but as the gorgeous norm. Creating spaces that have an equivalence of experience for all who navigate them, both physically and conceptually, muf delivers quality and strategical durable projects that inspire a sense of ownership through occupation.'
muf

The Beach at the End of the Line, Portpatrick (2001). Client: Dumfries and Galloway Council

Founded in 1996, muf is a cutting-edge arts and architecture collective that has established a reputation for the pioneering and innovative use of public space. It aims to 'allow multiple views and fantasies to coexist and inform the potential of shared places'. Projects include permanent and temporary art works and landscapes, buildings and strategies.

Museum Pavilion, St Albans Hypocaust, Verulamium Museum (2004). Client: St Albans City and District Council. Photo ©Jason Lowe

Muf works with existing communities, negotiating both public and private interests, and dealing with everything from access issues and community safety to planning constraints. In Derby, for example, muf worked with Dale community school to make the most of its learning space, clearing clutter, renovating the reception play-space and opening up the 'moat' separating the school from the street. At Portpatrick, in Dumfries and Galloway, a 2001 scheme to renovate the derelict edge of the harbour created a space for rest and play in which 'the intrinsic order of the cliffs, rocks and sea are intersected by the scheme geometry, laid out in grass, paving and play equipment, to reveal the give-and-take between natural forces and an ambition for an imposed control by the human inhabitants'. In St Albans, the collective designed a new pavilion to house a Roman mosaic in a municipal park, a reminder of the ancient city buried beneath. The materials included aggregate made out of crushed oyster shells, to create a continuity with original Roman materials.

Talking Heads (2005 – ongoing). Client: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Muf's art projects include the 2005 (and continuing) Talking Heads installation at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Six busts from the museum's collection, including those of Albert Einstein, Joseph Conrad and the Duke of Wellington, are placed around a table laid with other objects from the museum and on which there is a half-eaten meal. Visitors can join the famous heads at the table and eavesdrop on their conversations, which are recorded by actors in local accents.

Secret Garden (2007), Barking Town Square, London. A 'ruin' constructed from reclaimed bricks and architectural salvage, developed with the master bricklayers of Barking College as part of one of the mayor's 100 Public Spaces. Winner of the fifth European Prize for Urban Public Space, selected from 176 projects from 26 countries. Client: London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Muf is already familiar with the area of the Beckton Alps in Newham, east London, where the collective has been chosen to provide a piece of public art for the Big Art Project. The group had already been given the commission to redesign the public realm for nearby Barking town centre as part of the Mayor of London's '100 public spaces' programme. And on the Northern Outfall Sewer, which runs for several miles above ground in east London, it is developing step-free access across the sewer to connect neighbourhoods. This project, which is currently in development, incorporates pedestrian and cycling routes, seating, lighting and planting. The sewer has already been the focus for various public art projects and will provide an access route for pedestrians and cyclists to the Beckton Alps site.

Muf's website is at www.muf.co.uk.

The collective's Feral Arcadia blog is following progress on the 'Beckton Alps' public art project.

For more about muf's work for the Big Art Project, see Latest news.

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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

'The political or corporate takeover of the city takes place in such insidious ways. Everywhere we look there is advertising, an inescapable commercial monologue. Left outside of this system is we, the consumers. Short of graffiti or skateboarding, how else do we form part of the city?'
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Vectorial Elevation (1999). Robotic searchlights controlled by remote website commands. Premiered at the Zócalo Square, Mexico City. Photo Martin Vargas

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who has won the Big Art Project commission to develop a new public artwork for Prince Charles Quay in Cardigan, is a Mexican-Canadian multimedia artist who works with ideas from architecture, performance art and technology. Born in Mexico City in 1967, he has a bachelor of science degree in physical chemistry from Concordia University in Montreal. He currently lives and works in Montreal and Madrid.

Lozano-Hemmer describes himself as an 'electronic artist' and is best known for developing large-scale interactive installations in public spaces. Using robotics, projections, sound, internet and cell-phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide 'temporary anti-monuments for alien agency'.

He is responsible what may be the world's largest interactive installation, both in terms of its size and the number of participants. Vectorial Elevation was originally designed for the Millennium celebrations in Mexico City's Zócalo Square. The website www.alzado.net enabled people to design huge sculptures in light above the historic centre of the city, using an online 3D interface linked to robotic searchlights around the square. The light sculptures were visible for 15 kilometres, and 800,000 from 89 countries participated. Subsequent installations in the Spanish city of Vitoria-Gasteiz in 2002, in Lyon in 2003 and in Dublin in 2004 involved a further 300,000, 600,000 and 520,000 participants respectively.

Homographies (2006). Motorised fluorescent light fixtures, computerised surveillance tracking system. Premiered at the Sydney Biennale, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney. Variable dimensions. Photo: Antimodular

Recent work includes Homographies, which features 144 fluorescent lights controlled by computerised surveillance systems that react to people's movement underneath them. Subtitled Public is an empty exhibition space in which visitors are also tracked and 'subtitles' – thousands of verbs conjugated in the third person – are projected onto their bodies. In Under Scan, a large-scale public art project in Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton and Nottingham, thousands of video portraits were projected onto the ground of the main squares and pedestrian thoroughfares. At the same time, what was said to be the world's most powerful projector flooded the space with white light, so that the portraits were only visible in people's shadows. As an image appeared, the head turned to look directly at the person casting the shadow.

Underscan (2005-2006). Public art installation for the East Midlands region of the UK. Variable dimensions. Photo: Antimodular

The interactive element is crucial to Lozano-Hemmer's work. He has said that 'If no one participates, then the piece does not exist.' In an interview for the Ars Electronica Festival of new-media art in Linz, Austria, in 2002, he said in relation to his interactive video-portrait installation Body Movies, Relational Architecture 6: 'I make use of spectacle technologies. But I want to turn them around. My emphasis aims to avoid a preconceived outcome.'

Body Movies (2001). Xenon 7kW projectors with robotic scrollers, 1,200 duraclear transparencies, computerised surveillance system, plasma screen, mirrors. Projection measures between 400 and 1800 square metres. Courtesy V2_Organisatie, Rotterdam. Photo Arie Kievit

The winner of various awards for interactive art, including two Baftas, as well as Wired magazine's artist/performer of the year award in 2003, in 2007 Lozano-Hemmer represented Mexico with a solo show at the 52nd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial. Recent acquisitions of his work include that of 33 Questions Per Minute by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Subtitled Public by the Tate Modern in London.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's official website is at www.lozano-hemmer.com.

For more about Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's work for the Big Art Project, see Latest news.

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