The Billboard: A Piece of Social Infrastructure

Stephanie Sang Delgado

Co-Presenters: Alexa Acuna, Anna Boiarchuk, Fabio Castellanos

College: Michael Graves College

Department: MG School of Architecture

Abstract:

As the world becomes increasingly reliant on black-boxed, seemingly immaterial modes of digital computation, we are left wondering how we can bring tactility and materiality into discussions about computation. How can we push past notions of digital objects as virtual and immaterial? One way to shift this perception is to prioritize interactive computational analogs. Thus, two of our latest projects, Flip! and Signals focuses on designing and building an interactive billboard that allows visitors to compute by hand, together. Like an abacus, which functions as an analog, tactile, calculating machine, these billboards will engage users by allowing them to move components of the billboard and assemble images bit-by-bit.We see the billboard as a piece of social infrastructure. In contrast to typical billboards that are only meant to communicate messages outward, we invite the public to make their own image on the billboard by physically manipulating it. This brings them into dialogue not only with the tectonics of billboards such as split-flaps or rotating lenticular mechanisms, but also with the act of producing images themselves, something typically associated solely with immaterial screens. Here we are asking the public to look beyond the image and become image-makers themselves.This presentation will cover two projects. The first is Flip! completed in September 2025 for BuildFest (the Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival) in Bethel, NY. The second is a full-scale installation currently under development for the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for the exhibition, “Public Displays of Affection: Social Infrastructures and the City.”