Horizon is a huge public art installation for a new international terminal at Atlanta Airport. Originally commissioned in 2005, it lay dormant for two years while the airport coped with large cost over-runs and the consequent redesign of the new terminal. In 2008 we revised our design for the new architecture, but in late 2009 our work was canceled by airport administrataor, together with all other public art commissions for the site.
With Horizon, we aimed for a tight interconnection between the virtual world of the artwork and the actual space/time of the terminal.
Here, for example, a scene first aligns itself to an element in the terminal architecture, pivots the virtual 3d world around it, and then matches the movements of a subset of travelers in the terminal space:
- Alignment to architecture — a virtual column in the scene aligns itself to a column in the terminal. The scene is of an airport jet bridge, which is roughly aligned with the terminal walkway.
- Camera rotation — the scene pivots around the virtual column, which gives the illusion of its rotating around the real terminal column.
- Motion matching — the scene has pivoted to an angle that roughly matches the view onto the entrance to the Duty-Free shop below the artwork. Now the movements of travelers emerging from the shop are matched by those of virtual figures deplaning on the jet bridge.
Earlier version
The original design was for a much wider display (280 feet vs the present 90 feet). However, we will put the same number of LEDs as we originally specified into the smaller frame, achieving much finer resolution for our imagery.
The original design ideas, many of which have been carried over into the present work, may be found here.
Collaborators
Marco Steinberg oversaw the original architectural design of the structure, while nArchitects took over for the redesign. Dan Goldwater created the electrical and installation design for the LEDs of the display.
