In July, Las Vegas unveiled an extravagant spectacle - a colossal LED-wrapped spherical structure, standing 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide. This entertainment event venue instantly captured the public's gaze, becoming a local landmark and attracting global attention through extensive news coverage. Similar spherical concepts have been proposed in London and at a smaller scale in Los Angeles. These massive display structures open up questions about facades as digital canvases. What role can architecture take as an urban canvas other than as a billboard? And what are different ways for architecture to engage the public through digital art besides gigantic LED spheres?
In September this year, the Vegas Sphere started its artist rotation using its 1.2 million LED facade as a 360-degree digital art display. Its first artist, Refik Anadol, took over the Sphere with an artificial intelligence data sculpture called "Machine Hallucinations: Sphere." The piece uses data and machine learning algorithms to make large-scale animated abstractions that draw on urban environments, nature, and space. In an interview with the LA Times, Anadol said the Sphere allowed his work to stretch in new directions and take his video art to new heights. The novelty of the Sphere as an unusual art display opens up the question: what are other ways architecture could produce unique canvases for digital art?
