Occupy the Screen: A case study of open artworks for urban screens

This paper examines the cultural and political implications of and for the proliferation of public urban screens appearing in cities around the world. Through a contextual and cultural study of cities and urban communities, informed by the work of Richard Sennett, Lucy Lippard and Scott McQuire et al., the paper asks what the opportunities are for creativity, intervention and public cohesion through these screens? This paper presents a case study of the authors/artist’s practice-based research project “Occupy the Screen” 2014 for Connecting Cities Berlin and Riga 2014 European Capital of Culture. Using a practice-based methodology the authors utilise a method which maps the five elements of play, as defined by Hans Scheuerl in 1965 to measure open and closed systems in order to develop a framework for artists and curators to maximise engagement with public audiences through play.