The Sonic Gates at East Carolina University emit sounds when people walk through. They are part of Sonic Plaza, designed by Christopher Janney. Photo by Cliff Hollis. (Photo courtesy of the North Carolina Arts Council.)

Public art in this country has many antecedents, from the garden cemetery movement to the erecting of military monuments. The memorials, murals, fountains and figurative sculpture of the 18th and 19th centuries were commemorative, honoring loved ones and important persons and events. Taken together, these works created a narrative history of our culture and society.

For decades, suburbanization and urban development fostered buildings, plazas and public works with an impersonal homogeneity. Shopping malls and their acres of asphalt supplanted the small shops, parks and neighborhood feeling of Main Streets. Our nation's love of cars further diminished the opportunity for social interaction. Public art created in this context was about disguising the blandness of buildings and spaces. Murals decorated blank walls, sculptures drew attention away from empty plazas.

Over the last 30 years, neighborhood associations, preservation groups and civic-minded leaders have begun to restore their communities' "landscape of the imagination" -- an idealized sense of place expressed in historic buildings, cultural facilities and public art. Towns and cities, with support from state arts agencies, are using public art projects as one strategy for creating spaces that bring people together, attracting visitors and local citizens alike. In so doing, they are also renewing community pride and identity.

At East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, a recently completed North Carolina Arts Council project uses a variety of elements to turn an open space into an interactive work of art. A 300-foot plaza that stretches between the interior of the campus and a main city avenue unites utility with beauty, and creates a new entrance to the campus. The artwork on this lively and playful thoroughfare is aptly named Sonic Plaza, with sounds and sights that are shaped by the actions of the public.

Art and Social Activity Converge

Enter the plaza through the Sonic Gates, which are the library's original classical columns, and you'll trigger melodic and environmental sounds that continuously change. The next element you'll encounter is the 15-foot by 40-foot Percussive Water Wall, with 64 water jets arranged to play a series of ever-changing patterns of water mist. The fountain responds to movement: "When no one is there, the fountain will be quiet, asleep," explains sound artist Christopher Janney, who animated the plaza designed by architect Larry Robbs.

The plaza, like earlier forms of public art, reflects our culture and society--in this case, our fascination with technology.

For more than 20 years, Janney has created interactive installations in such public spaces as the Spanish Steps in Rome, Miami International Airport, subways in Paris and Boston, and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He trained as an architect and a jazz musician and uses this expertise in his creations.

Past the Percussive Water Wall is the Media Glockenspiel. This 85-foot clock tower designed by Robbs is based on examples of 15th century glockenspiels. Janney put his 20th century spin on time, creating a ring of a dozen, 20-inch video monitors arranged around a set of three-foot doors. From the doors, different icons emerge four times a day. For example, an abstraction of a rooster appears at dawn, complete with crowing. At midnight, a joker emerges.

At the opposite entrance to the plaza a misting fountain creates a cloud of water vapor that interacts with wind and pedestrian movement. Entitled Ground Cloud, this 12-foot circular fountain is illuminated from sunset to sunrise and is designed to "dance according to the whim of the wind, at times static, at times furious," says Janney.

The plaza, like earlier forms of public art, reflects our culture and society -- in this case, our fascination with technology. The multiple computer systems, photo-electric cells, video-switching systems and other technical gizmos give the plaza a vitality that is engaging and fun. Student dancers have performed to the sounds of the Percussive Water Wall, children and adults play in the Ground Cloud and Sonic Gates, and passersby are entertained by the video show in the Media Glockenspiel.

Sonic Plaza also serves as a laboratory for experimenting with media arts. Under faculty supervision, student musicians and artists can create their own compositions of water and sound for the gates and the water wall, and can develop video compositions and sculpture for the glockenspiel.

Janney's work was commissioned by the North Carolina Arts Council under the Artworks for State Buildings program, which ran from1989 to 1995. Through this program, artworks were commissioned for new public buildings using one-half of one percent of a building's construction budget. The arts council continues to administer the collection of 60 works, which capture the intent of the program's guidelines "to locate public art in places where people gather to live, work, play or learn."

ART IN PUBLIC PLACES PROGRAMS

Twenty-four state arts agencies have Percent for Art or Art in Public Places programs. Hawaii established the first program in 1967.

PUBLIC ART SAMPLER

Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places

San Francisco Arts Commission

Sustrans
A nonprofit whose purpose is to create public artworks for an 8,000-mile trail in the United Kingdom

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Jeffrey York
Director of Public Art and Community Design
North Carolina Arts Council
Phone: 919/715-0834

RESOURCES

Public Art on the Net

The work of NASAA and of state arts agencies is supported and strengthened in many ways through partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.