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UNDERGROUND ART GOES UNDERGROUND
Various underground metro systems around the world have permanent art installations but rarely are there exhibitions of independent artworks inside the stations where passengers wait for, enter and disembark from trains. This may in large part be due to the risk of vandalism. On the other hand, artwork that has on rare occasion emerged from subways and became well known has been various forms of graffiti, such as that of Keith Haring.
Equally rare are artworks inside of subway/metro systems that are thematically about the subject of subway/metro systems. The closest thing to such artwork are some of the color-coded functional subway maps. These maps are in themselves fantasies of the actual systems, for it is impossible to see through the terrain of the earth to attempt capturing a realistic view of what is inside, whereby topical street maps are usually far more representative of an aerial view of the terrain.
For the sake of expressing what may be unrealistic concepts that are realistically designed by one’s imagination, on the full-screen background slide show of this page, I am presenting the illusion of presenting digital artworks abstractly representing the maps of actual systems, whereby they appear to be installed at both an entrance and on the insides of various subway stations. The cities that they represent: New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Barcelona, Stockholm and Moscow are seen, in that order, in the full screen slide show on this page.
The first slide show image shows a progression of the idea of how these artworks came to be. There are three different abstractions of a map of the New York Subway, seen next to an actual map. From right to left, the first image was conceived, in 1989, on the first architectural computer assist design system on the market, as a simple multicolored line drawing of a New York Subway map. The second example was created on the same computer by mathematically multiplying each line of that composition a number of times, each copy skewed just a bit at the same angle, so each line appears to be both significantly thickened, resulting in a bit of a 3D effect. This represents my artistic manipulation of a computer system that in no way was intended to be utilized for other than to create 2D technical architectural drawings. The third example was conceived around 25 years later, by further developing the original simple line drawing with current digital graphics software, prior to the existence of AI.
The next two pages exhibit other similar images that were further evolutions created nearly a decade later, of the same original composition, yet with even more advanced computer graphics possibilities. One can also see on the second page that the actual New York Subway map underwent a significant aesthetic transformation, which is commonplace of virtually all cities.
Note: None of this artwork has been enhanced in any way with AI technology.
