PUBLIC ART
By artists Michael Thomas Hill, Indigo Hanlee and Lightwell, High Water has been selected as a permanent public artwork to activate the new Green Square town centre in Sydney.
Scheduled to be installed in the public plaza outside the library in early 2018, the artwork is a 9 metre two-sided blade with high resolution LED screens which will graphically interpret local weather patterns and tidal information using integrated sensors and live data feeds.
The blade’s program will be created using a mixed style of hand-created watercolours and generative art – computer produced patterns designed by our team that constantly transform in relation to linked live data. In this generative watercolour the weather system will ultimately take on the daily role of creator.
Watery blues at the tower base will rise and fall with the tidal patterns of the hour. The skies above will shift in pattern and colour depending on the sun’s position, temperature and wind directions.
A complementary web app will allow visitors to understand the data, colours and patterns in real time and see visual summaries of local environmental conditions over the day, week and year.
This artwork will turn what is accessible, but often intangible data into moving watercolours to create a visual language for the changing environment – painting a long-term picture of the environmental changes in Green Square.
High Water has been commissioned by the City of Sydney.