The “Expo” and the Post-“Expo”: The Role of Public Art in Urban Regeneration Processes in the Late 20th Century

In 1998, the Lisbon Universal Exhibition—Expo’98—led to an urban regeneration process on Lisbon’s waterfront. Following the example of other cities, this event was a pretext for rethinking and replacing a depressed area and for reconnecting it with the Tagus river through the creation of a set of new spaces for common use along the water. It was promoted as a public art program, which can be considered quite innovative in the Portuguese context. In view of this framework, this article aims to debate the relationships between public art and the dynamics of urban regeneration at the end of the 20th century. For that, it will analyse: (1) Expo’98’s public art program, comparing its initial assumptions with the final results; and (2) the impact of this program, through the identification of the placement of public art before (1974–1998) and after (1999–2009) the event. Although most of the implemented works did not (intentionally) explore aspects of space integration nor issues of public space appropriation, Expo’98’s public art program originated a monumentalisation of Lisbon’s eastern riverfront, later extended to other waterfront areas. At the same time, it played an important role in the way of understanding the city and public space that decisively influenced subsequent policies and projects. It is concluded that public art had a significant role in urban processes in the late 20th century, which is quite evident in a discourse of urban art as space qualifier and as a means of economic and social development.

Smart City Public Art Planning and Design in a Multimedia Internet of Things Environment Integrating Scene Elements

Public art planning and design in the context of smart cities need to keep pace with the times, but the integrity of the original scene needs to be maintained in the process of public art design. Therefore, this paper combines the elements of the scene and integrates the Internet of Things smart city to conduct public art planning and design research. Moreover, based on the multimedia Internet of Things environment, this paper analyzes the effects of virtual reality technology in urban public art planning and design and gives the overall optimization ideas for the organization and rendering of VR scene data. Then, this paper studies the organization and rendering optimization methods of the terrain scene model and the scene model, respectively. The experimental research results show that the smart city public art planning and design system under the multimedia Internet of Things environment designed in this paper has a good smart city public art planning and design effect.

The Visibility of Multisensor Fusion Technology in Public Art Design

This exploration is aimed at improving the efficiency and safety of fully automatic line operation in public space. From the perspective of multisensor fusion technology, the definition, development status, and design principles of public art, as well as the related applications of multisensor fusion technology theory and image fusion theory, are introduced by consulting relevant literature. Then, the scheme of subway platform door gap antipinch detection system based on multisensor fusion and the obstacle detection method of tram in transit are proposed. Finally, through the method of questionnaire, the passengers’ cognition of public art in subway space and the concerned components of public art in subway space are analyzed. The results show that the subway space art content loved by passengers is mainly daily life, and the degree of love can reach 28%, followed by local customs, culture, and fashion trends, with a degree of love of 23%. Besides, the problem of obstacle detection of tram in transit is also studied, and a new obstacle detection method combining visual sensor transmission detection and lidar detection is proposed. This method can quickly and accurately identify unsafe factors. Therefore, the research on the visibility of multisensor fusion technology in public art design has great reference significance for the rapid development of transportation industry.

The Role of Public Art in Solar Commons Institution-Building: Community Voices from an Essential Partnership among Artists, Community Solar Researchers, and Activists

In this urgent decade when American democracy faces the challenge of decarbonizing the U.S. electric grid and assuring that the economic benefits of our energy transition are equitably shared, many solar energy researchers and activists are searching for new ways to partner with the civic sector. Instead of treating energy users as passive customers, experts understand the importance of engaging community as active decision-makers, beneficiaries, and communicators for a just energy transition. Distributed solar technology offers more democratic potential than small savings on individuals’ electric bills. Energy experts working on the Solar CommonsÔ community solar model at the University of Minnesota are piloting demonstration projects with community partners in Arizona and Minnesota. These solar commons aggregate savings through power purchase agreements that create 25-year peer-governed revenue streams to support mutual aid and reparative justice work in neighborhoods. This article describes a Solar Commons research project in Arizona, with a conversation among the public artists who partnered with the legal research team to co-create communication and peer governance tools that will allow DIY Solar Commons to iterate throughout the US as a new institution in our civic sector. Images of the Solar Commons public art demonstrate how the artists helped expand the vision of solar energy from the iconic individual solar panel to a technology embedded in community justice and in a complex human-more-than-human environment.

Changes in the themes, aesthetics and functions of public images in Kyiv due to the influence of socio-cultural processes in the society of 1990-2010

On the back of the rapid development in public art in recent decades, and in particular graffiti and muralism, interest in them has grown significantly among cultural studies scholars, art critics, architects, sociologists, and urban planners. Numerous works that have appeared in the West and in Ukraine are devoted to various aspects of the visual public art existence. This theme continues to be one of the most relevant for contemporary visual art. This article complements the bunch of acquired knowledge with a detailed study of the impact of socio-cultural processes in society on the changes that took place in monumental painting, graffiti and muralism in Kyiv during 1990–2010, i.e. during the most important changes in politics and society in recent decades. The peculiarities of each historical stage of this influence are analysed and outlined in the study, and the theoretical analysis is displayed by the description of the most characteristic works. Most of them are researched in detail. In addition, the process of decline of monumental painting in the late 1980s and early 1990s is analysed, the factors of graffiti flourishing in the 1990s are identified and highlighted, and the origins of the rapid development of muralism after 2004 and especially after 2014 are explored. At each stage, changes in the themes, aesthetics and functions of public images are traced. The definitions, such as muralism and graffiti, are updated in this paper, taking into account changes in art and the latest achievements in its analysis. The manifestations of the national-patriotic themes in the contemporary art of muralism are considered in detail, the classification of art work on this subject is given, the corresponding examples are given. Such concepts as public art, synthesis of arts, monumental painting, graffiti, muralism are attentively aligned. The study of the nature of the socio-cultural processes and visual arts correlations is promising for further scientific and theoretical developments and the practical aspect for better understanding of the specific works