ASUS Business Hub

Large format digital displays aren't just being used for advertising and corporate communications, the creative arts world is also benefiting from higher resolutions, bigger, brighter and more robust screens. Brands, environments, and artists are using large format displays to reach audiences with artworks and creative offerings in public spaces – valuing experiences alongside calls to action and customer offers.

The Thomas Bradley Terminal at LAX airport opened in 2013, and is a regular host of installation artworks on its JCDecaux operated large format screens. With seven super large video walls in total throughout the terminal, there are two main screens in the arrivals and departures areas – a Welcome Wall and a Bon Voyage Wall.

LAX's Terminal has a range or art installations

As opposed to running digital display advertisements, LAX opted to enhance its customer's experience with a series of art and ‘experiential’ installations. Designed by Marcela Sardi of Sardi Design, who acted as creative director for the content, the walls include giant goldfish bowl renders, blue sky areas with fast moving clouds, and a four-sided Time Tower portal that navigates passengers to their departure gate through a series of animated clockwork mechanisms.

The Welcome Wall installation is based around an 80 ft LED wall, which is fed by four HD inputs and has in the past displayed topical content – such as the glamour of the red carpet and dazzling bulb flashes during Oscar season – as well as abstract atmospherics and artworks.

The Welcome Wall at LAX hosting an artwork

The Bon Voyage Wall hosts a range of installations, including a series inspired by the photographer Philippe Halsman, whose Jumpology series depicts LA locals and celebrities jumping up and down in super-slow motion across the departure terminal’s 120 ft digital wall.

It’s not just in-house large format displays that are being used to show more artistic and creative experiences. Art Everywhere launched in 2013, using Time Squares’ large format digital advertising boards to house a series of exhibitions of American fine art. It was such a success that more than 50 famous American artworks that comprise the Art Everywhere campaign were displayed across airports, shopping malls and theatres in various cities in the US, offering public audiences access to artists such as Grant Wood, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman.

Andy Warhol's famous works as part of the Art Everywhere campaign

Newer large format digital displays are invoking technologies that turn the art experience from a passive, received medium, into an active, creative one. Visualisations and infographic display content is capable of creating enthralling artworks from analytics and real-time data, such as the installations created by Framestore CFC for Morgan Stanley’s Times Square Headquarters. Meanwhile, the Canada Council of Arts houses an interactive LED screen in its foyer that enables audiences to create their own digital artworks by dragging and drawing on the screen.

Ultimately, many retailers and businesses rightly consider artworks on large format digital displays as a non-invasive in-store experience that compliment the hard-sell marketing messages often found out of store.

For  more information on interactive and non-interactive screens capable of displaying and creating large format artworks, follow @ABusinessHub on twitter for the latest large format digital display news.