Ambient Outdoor Media
Harsh outdoor screens dominate our environment, leading to light trespass and visual fatigue. Different ways of using smart materials and art show promising ways of redesigning the built environment.
Recently, videos of 3D billboards have gone viral, showing impressive vivid displays of a realistic water tank or animal hovering inside a building. (Movia, 2021) The trend for cities is to place bigger and brighter screens in the sky, competing for your attention. Dense cities like NYC and Hong Kong are known for their overwhelming energy, which is visually represented through neon flashing lights and screens covering the sides of buildings and streets. These impressive displays may be dazzling, but an overabundance of outdoor screens has caused disturbances due to light pollution and visual pollution.
Problems with Current Displays
LED screens allowed for the low-cost interchangeable display of advertisements and quickly became the norm for outdoor media around the world. While regulations have been placed over the years to limit the brightness and density of these screens, the problem is that current digital displays are simply too bright. Light trespass, or excess light spilling over into unintended areas, can greatly affect the comfort and health of residents. A study was conducted in Taiwan assessing the light trespass caused by digital billboards that were well under the luminance limit set by regulations. (Ho and Lin, 2015) The researchers found there was significant light trespass and reported annoyance by residents due to the high coverage and density of the screens.
Digital billboards are meant to grab your attention, making them distracting as a function of their design. Bright lights not only disrupt the trajectory of migrating birds, but road-side billboards can be a distraction to drivers. (Scenic America) A compilation of research shows evidence that digital billboards decrease the focus of drivers, especially inexperienced or visiting drivers. (Namba, 2012) Long-term, digital billboards cause visual fatigue to drivers when comparing commuters who drove through areas with many billboards or no billboards. (Scenic America) Studies have even shown that this visual fatigue causes people to ignore these signs. Dr. Chmielewski referred to this phenomenon as visual pollution “caused by the oversaturation of a landscape with anthropogenic visual information.” (Chmielewski, 2021)
Digital displays dominating our built environments are too harsh and are not optimized for the people living there. Instead, billboards are often made to benefit the advertiser, being as loud as possible, which can have adverse effects. To address this problem, the idea of ambient media is introduced, where media is instead blended with the surrounding environment while still allowing for flexible content and communication. Media displays are not likely to go away, instead they could be more integrated into the environment for the sake of our health and to maintain the beauty and appeal of outdoor spaces. (Hessels and Stoyanova, 2022)
However, designing ambient media could be difficult if restrained to the current materials, such as LED screens which are meant to draw attention. In their article, Smart Materials, Future Cities: potential for sustainable ambient urban informatics, Dr. Hessels and Dr. Stoyanova suggest that a way to redesign spaces and technology is by designing with smart materials, or materials that react with the environment. Artists taking advantage of different material properties has led to many interesting artistic displays in the past. Reactive materials are not only a great source of inspiration to artists, but they also have the ability to change with the environment and appear more blended with their surroundings. Therefore, a combination of materials science with art may be a great approach to the long-overdue problems with billboards.
Smart materials and Traditional Art
Smart materials have been an essential point of growth for discovering ways to merge media and other man-made constructs to create a more fluid environment. Some art displays involve using heat-sensitive paint so that their appearance changes with temperature. An example of this is by Dan Lam, where she applies thermochromic paint to her spiky blob-like sculptures to make dynamic exhibits. Troels Flensted Studios similarly uses thermally activated paints on their outdoor wall exhibit that are meant to reveal colors underneath if triggered by the heat of human touch. By focusing on the reactivity of materials, the combination of art and media can become more interactive for people, attracting interest and piquing curiosity.
Studio Roosegaarde attempts to bring these intriguing elements to large-scale urban design projects such as Smart Highways - a project countering harsh street lighting by using smart paint. Smart paints charge up during the day from the sun and emit a soft glow at night to create a lighting experience that enhances safety and beauty along the roads. Part of this project includes the Van Gogh Path, where this paint swirls along the ground similarly to the famous ‘Starry Night’ painting.
Smart materials guiding the design of media displays
There have been different projects working to mesh outdoor media with the environment using smart materials, bringing these ideas of reactive materials to displays for communication. KA Dynamic Color creates a new type of display system that looks similar to a digital billboard but works much differently. While LED screens simply emit light and compete with the sun, their Pigmented Pixel uses the power of sunlight reflection to produce vivid colors with less energy. By taking inspiration from the color-changing nature of chameleons and focusing on producing reactive materials, they created screens to work in harmony with the environment.
Concluding Remarks
Outdoor digital billboards are meant to draw attention, and thus has led to widespread issues being overly stimulating and distracting. But would advertisers be willing to incorporate their content into more ambient, unobtrusive screens? One could also argue that the introduction of an art display or a new form of media would garner interest, especially if this is a more environmentally friendly piece. Rather than getting rid of media displays entirely, they can be greatly improved by combining art with advanced materials. Innovations could meld media into a more natural environment that doesn’t disrupt our senses and energy consumption, not only for advertisements but also for communicating important information in times of emergencies or directing people to public services.
Sources
Hessels, S., & Stoyanova, M. T. (2022). Smart Materials, Future Cities: Potential for Sustainable Ambient Urban Informatics. Visual Communication Quarterly, (just-accepted), 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2022.2059759
Ho, C. Y., & Lin, H. T. (2015). Analysis of and control policies for light pollution from advertising signs in Taiwan. Lighting Research & Technology, 47(8), 931-944. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1477153514559795
Rawatshubhani. (2021, August 10). 3D OOH billboards. Movia Moving Billboard Advertising. https://movia.media/moving-billboard-blog/3d-ooh-billboards/
Billboards Endanger Health and Safety. (2020, May 15). Scenic America. https://www.scenic.org/sign-control/billboard-info/safety-issues/
Chmielewski, S. (2021). Towards managing visual pollution: A 3D ISOVIST and voxel approach to advertisement Billboard Visual Impact Assessment. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 10(10), 656. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10100656
Caltrans Division of Research and Innovation. (2012) Effects of Outdoor Advertising Displays on Driver Safety. Caltrans Division of Research and Innovation. http://ftp.costamesaca.gov/costamesaca/planningcommission/agenda/2021/2021-02-08/PH-1-Att-4.pdf
Dan Lam. (n.d.). ABOUT. https://bydanlam.com/pages/about
Sambursky, V. (n.d.). Dan Lam’s Trippy, Drippy Sculptures Ooze Otherworldliness. Rogue Habits. https://roguehabits.com/artist-dan-lams-inspiration-trippy-drippy-sculptures/
THERMOCHROMIC WALL. (2018, November 15). Troels Flensted. https://troelsflensted.com/work/thermochromic-wall/
Smart Highway. (2013, October 19). Studio Roosegaarde. https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/smart-highway
Outdoor Billboards. (2021). KA Dynamic Color. https://www.ka-dynamiccolor.com/innovation
