How Bus Shelters Become Art Installations

For the occasion of the Artists Taking The Lead fund, designers Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu have proposed an installation of approximately 40 1.75m x 1.3m LED panels on the roofs of bus shelters across all London boroughs. Their project, which they call ‘Bus-Tops’, will be a democratised virtual canvas that displays work created by the public.

According to Dennen and Le Dieu, “the installations are intended to pleasantly and wonderfully disrupt commuters experience of riding on buses” and “inspire joy and wonder in the last place you’d expect it – on the roof of a bus shelter”. They are right, it’s a pretty weird place for a huge LED panel. How does this thing work then? The idea is to offer a digital drawing board on which anyone can create. People could upload an image, animation, text or video (with loop), start completely fresh, or even start from another artist’s work. The screens are monochromatic. The initiators encourage designers and artists from around the world to engage with the Bus-Top project and submit their ideas to the platform.

The Bus-Tops project is one of five proposals for the Artists Taking The Lead fund, which is a major project of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.