Interactive Mulitmedia Artwork Platform

In the fall of 2012, following an open request for qualifications, the Ramsay County Regional Railroad Authority commissioned a Northern Lights.mn-led team

“to design a major artwork and multimedia artwork platform that would encompass much of the publicly accessible space associated with Union Depot. The platform would support a variety of new media technologies and information delivery systems for future artwork commissions including: digital and interactive art; computer graphics and animation; virtual, physical, performance, and installation art. The artwork developed by this team will be the inaugural artwork coinciding with the reopening of Union Depot and should have a compelling initial impact and function as a sustainable work that can be repeated many times into the future.”

 Schematic Design

In April 2013, the Union Depot Art Selection and Design Review Panel approved our schematic design for a two-part Interactive Multimedia Artwork Platform, consisting of a dynamic light sculpture and “Amateur Intelligence Radio.” Our objectives with IMAP are to: Enchant the space; connect people to their environment to make them care about its past, its future – its people, its stories; give passers-by a role in how the building comes to life; stimulate ownership in a playful and active way.

Amateur Intelligence Radio

Amateur Intelligence Radio (AIR) is the voice of the building, connecting people to Union Depot. As people come and go, AIR narrates activities within its walls and stages little interventions to celebrate the renewed life at this major Saint Paul site–both landmark and living room. Union Depot has seen a lot: booms and busts, wars and peace, and in many ways, Saint Paul’s history, if not the region’s,  is Union Depot’s history. A building as old as Union Depot  has spent a lot of time people watching. It has memories, and it has a personality.

In 1925, when WCCO Radio moved in, Union Depot was given a voice. Almost 90 years later, AIR will finally give the Union Depot its voice back. The voice of Union Depot will tell people about its long, storied history and also about what’s going on in it at the moment. AIR will be available as a webstream, but the primary interface will be a series of Listening Stations in Union Depot’s Waiting Room, initially.

Artist rendering, AIR "Social" and "River" listening stations

The public will be able to add their stories to AIR through a custom interface and community AIRstory workshops.

IMAP Team

We assembled an experienced international team of artists and creators, all of whom have worked in the Twin Cities as well as a wide range of settings around the world.  Large, complex, conceptually open, multifaceted, time-sensitive multi-stakeholder projects such as the Union Depot Interactive Media Artwork Platform require a team approach. No single person can create a truly multi-user, multi-functional platform. Our team has exceptional experience making and presenting world-class art. We have worked in sensitive architectural environments, and we know how to deliver on time and within budget. Seven colleagues fill out the creative team.

Steve Dietz, project leader and Northern Lights.mn’s’ Founder, President and Artistic Director, is an experienced platform creator, who has conceived and executed leading digital platforms for the Smithsonian Institution and the Walker Art Center as well as broad-based, community and education oriented initiatives such as mnartists.org and ArtsConnectEd. His curatorial work is recognized internationally. He has commissioned hundreds of interactive public artworks in the past decade, and has extensive experience working successfully with complex, multifaceted programs in both San Jose, as founder of the 01SJ Biennial, and the Twin Cities, as founder of Northern Spark.

Jim Campbell, an engineer by training, is an internationally acclaimed artist, whose work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is a visionary, whose seminal work has helped define the field of interactive, multimedia art since1985. His public art installations have been lauded by hundreds of thousands of people at Madison Square Park, NYC, the Byron Rogers Courthouse, Denver, the 17th century St. Sulpice Cathedral, Paris, the San Diego airport, and Upper Landing, St. Paul. Jim’s role will be to investigate and demonstrate ways to integrate high impact, dynamic LED artwork appropriately into the architectural program of Union Depot.

Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat collaborate as Daily tous les jours, which creates new ways to interact and tell stories, believing in participation–empowering people to have a place in the stories that are told around them. The experiences created bring magic to everyday places, behaviors and objects. They have presented large scale, participatory art projects for PS1 MOMA, Victoria & Albert Museum, Berlin Transmediale Festival, Montreal’s Nuit Blanche, and the Minnesota State Fair. Mouna and Melissa’s role will be to create the platform for, and example of, a massively participatory project, which engages Union Depot users and the surrounding community.

Sarah Peters, a book artist, is Northern Lights’ Director of Public Engagement. She was at the Walker Art Center for a decade, where she was Associate Director of Education, Public and Interpretive Programs, and her duties included cultivating and sustaining community partnerships with local universities, art organizations, and civic institutions. Sarah’s role is to not only engage the local communities in Union Depot’s IMAP but to create a sustainable platform for doing so over a period of years.

Andrea Steudel, project coordinator, was the Producer and Technical Director for Northern Spark in 2011 and 2012. She is an art producer, strategist, and maker from the Midwestern United States. Steudel specializes in creating mobile platforms for the broadcasting of technology-based media. She is a founding member of the acclaimed Minneapolis Art on Wheels ensemble and has worked with them in San Jose, Beijing, Grand Rapids, Istanbul, Budapest and other cities around the United States. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley and is an alumni of the University of Minnesota’s Undergraduate Program in Experimental and Media Arts. She is also a former Art(ists) On the Verge Fellow.

Michael Murnane is a 29-year veteran of theatrical lighting design. He has lit more than 1,000 shows throughout the U.S., Canada, China, Tanzania, Kenya, and Europe in a wide range of theatrical genres: theater, opera, concerts, galas, television, corporate events, and architecture. Recently, he performed Landmark in a River City, an architectural mapping projection of and onto the facade of the Landmark Center, and he will perform Under Ice for this year’s Northern Spark on the historic Pillsbury A Mill in Minneapolis. Michael’s role is to investigate and present a dynamic lighting platform for Union Depot.

Matthew Kruntorad, an architect at Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, which has worked on thousands of buildings and dozens of restorations around the world. Matthew’s role is to engage with the desires and needs for historic preservation in any programming of Union Depot as well as the pragmatic architectural and engineering requirements of doing so.