A Healing Tool for the highway
Artist Brian Kane has co-opted the billboards lining two Massachusetts highways and returned them to nature
Artist Brian Kane has co-opted the billboards lining two Massachusetts highways and returned them to natureThe temporary installation, named Healing Tool, aims to provide a moment of beauty and temporary relief on the daily commute, by filling roadside advertorial space with images of the greenery it obstructs. “By removing the marketing message from the advertising space, we create an unexpected moment of introspection,” says Kane, explaining his ‘unvertisements’. “People are allowed to interpret an image based on their own experience, and not necessarily with the singular focus of the advertiser’s intent.” Missing information from behind the billboard is used as a fill in, and at night the images of foliage are replaced with high-resolution photographs of the moon, synced in time with lunar phases, in order to show what is normally occluded by light pollution. Kane’s body of work looks at the experience of the digital, and Healing Tool, named after the Photoshop function, in particular deals with the idea of simulating or replacing nature with technology – just as the tool is used to patch over blemishes in photographs, so Kane is patching over blemishes in the landscape with a digital simulation. “It appears to be replacing the artificial with the natural,” says Kane. “But it’s really just using technology to simulate a nature replacement” Still hungry for more? Sign up for our weekly supplement featuring the latest news, profiles, features and innovation
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