Times Square-Goers to Be 'Submerged' By Latest Art Installation

TIMES SQUARE — Battle a Kraken, explore a shipwreck and tour a lost civilization next month — without leaving Midtown.

Between 11:57 p.m. and midnight each night in July, Times Square’s billboards will stream “Voyage,” a video installation that takes viewers “on an adventure deep under the sea.”

“With a whimsical and somewhat Victorian feel, ‘Voyage’ combines ancient maritime legends, man’s eternal struggle with nature and current environmental concerns with our everlasting thirst for discovery,” Times Square Arts and the Times Square Advertising Coalition said in a release.

Red Hook-based artist Beau Stanton, whose work is “heavily informed by historic ornamentation, religious iconography and classical painting,” created the piece, which is this month’s “Midnight Moment.”

 

It’s on! I am very pleased to finally announce my next major project that has been almost a year in the making, a three minute multi-channel animation that will take over the screens of Time’s Square for @tsqarts Midnight Moment starting this Friday at 11:57pm running for the entire month of July. Countless thanks to everyone who made it happen, my long time curatorial partner @thelorizimmer, Times Square Arts Director @sherrydobbin, and my animation/production team Wesley Wingo, Ryan Savini, and Brent Ferguson. Midnight Moment is the largest coordinated effort in history by the sign operators in Times Square to display synchronized, cutting-edge creative content on electronic billboards and newspaper kiosks throughout Times Square every night. The program premiered in May 2012 and is organized and supported by the Times Square Advertising Coalition in partnership with Times Square Arts, the public art program for the Times Square Alliance, with additional partners of participating sign holders and artists. Times Square Arts brings Beau Stanton’s multi-channel animation Voyage to Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 p.m. to midnight every night in July. This project is a part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts. #VoyageTSq #midnightmoment

A photo posted by Beau Stanton (@beaustanton) on Jun 27, 2016 at 11:47am PDT

“The main idea for 'Voyage' was to create an immersive experience where the viewer feels like they have just wandered into another world by visually submerging Times Square below the sea,” Stanton said in a statement.

More than a dozen screens in the Crossroads of the World will broadcast the project.

“Brilliantly, the artist takes our everyday place and turns it inside out to take us on a mythical voyage in which we battle a kraken and the high seas through a Victorian graphic lens,” Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said in a statement.