PIONEER TOWER ICONIC PUBLIC ART PREMIERE EVENT

August 20-21, 2021 9 PM – 1 AM

Fort Worth Public Art is pleased to present new groundbreaking public artworks by two internationally acclaimed new media artists: Los Angeles-based artist Refik Anadol and Rome- and London-based artist Quayola. These large-scale new media installations will premiere as the first of four major public art projects across Fort Worth,  a project coinciding with FWPA’s 20^th anniversary year, continuing Fort Worth’s long history of supporting the arts and showcasing its dedication to promoting innovation and technology. The pair of works have been commissioned by the City of Fort Worth to be projected on all four sides of the 204-foot tall historic Pioneer Tower located in the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth’s Cultural District on August 20–21, 2021. The event will be free and open to the public.

This first-of-its-kind event will celebrate Fort Worth’s collective memories and natural beauty in a big way through a marriage of art and cutting-edge technology by two of the most prominent new media artists in the world today. – Martha Peters, Director of Public Art, Arts Council of Fort Worth

For their audio-visual works, Anadol and Quayola both took advantage of the newest artificial intelligence and data visualization technology to create their works. For Pioneer Tower Dreams, Refik Anadol captures and reimagines Fort Worth citizens’ memories of the city using machine learning algorithms. Texas Surveys by Quayola explore the natural beauty of Fort Worth through what he calls “computational paintings,” which visualize data captured from sources such as laser-scanned trees or the motion-captured movement of horses.

Pioneer Tower was rehabilitated in 2019, recreating its historic glass brick windows and updating the internal lighting system. During that time, project partners Joshua King and Shane Pennington—co-founders and part of the creative team behind public arts organization AURORA—worked with the FWPA program to ensure the Tower’s infrastructure possessed the data and energy necessary for large-scale projected video installations. King and Pennington also served as consultants in the process that led to the selection of new media curator DooEun Choi and artists Refik Anadol and Quayola for this inaugural installation.

To celebrate the unveiling of these artworks, the Arts Council of Fort Worth and AURORA are partnering to organize a supporting exhibition, which will run throughout the duration of Anadol and Quayola’s presentations. Fort Worth-based creative entrepreneur, scholar, and curator Lauren Cross, Ph.D., will select works by North Texas artists who work with technology-based art.