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[Exclusive Photos] Billboards Make Interstates into Art Galleries

Brian Kane battles the commuting blues with his roadside digital art displays.
All images © Brian Kane. Photography: Nate Wieselquist and Simone Schiess.

A sky-high art gallery greets Massachusetts’ commuters on their daily grind this summer. Above Interstate 93 and 95, artist Brian Kane’s hacked billboards project displays of digital art. Healing Tool, Kane’s installation simulates the "Photoshop effect": the signs cycle through a string of images from the local scenery, superimposed over the IRL environs. At night, the displays glow with high-resolution shots of the moon and the Milky Way, synced to the daily lunar cycle.

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“Thematically, the piece is ambiguously green,” says Kane in his artist statement. “It appears to be replacing the artificial with the natural, but it’s really just using technology to simulate a nature replacement.” As drivers whiz past Kane's art, the billboard mimics the 3D attributes of its IRL counterpart through the illusion of the parallax effect.

“The goal is to provide a moment of temporary relief and unexpected beauty during the daily grind of commuting,” the artist explains. Additionally, in removing the conventional marketing super-signs from the roadway, “It’s also a form of 'unvertising' — a campaign without a message," Kane concludes. "By removing the marketing message from the advertising space, we create an unexpected moment of introspection.”

See more on Brian Kane's website.

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