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Getting in tune with the Chicago art scene during Lollapalooza

July 30, 2018 / Chicago

Lollapalooza sets the stage for one of the biggest weekends in Chicago, with music lovers from all over heading to Grant Park to hear their favorite artists. It’s a time when everyone comes together as a community to revel in the passion and freedom of music. As the official rideshare partner of Lollapalooza and to celebrate the festival and Chicago’s art community, we’ve partnered with local artists Kalan Strauss and Kristen Youngman to help bring Lollapalooza to the streets.

Check out the artists, the vision behind their art, and more below.

About the Artists

Kalan Strauss

Interdisciplinary artist Kalan Strauss, whose father is an actor, was raised in Los Angeles surrounded by Hollywood studios and TV sets. That backdrop influences his art practice, where false realities provide viewers an escape from their everyday lives. He likes to create work that invokes many points of views and includes today’s relationship between technology and man.

Kristen Youngman

An American media artist, art director, and interactive designer, Kristen Youngman is best known for her augmented reality and projection installations, working mainly in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. She returned to her hometown of Chicago in 2012 to complete her MFA in visual communication and interaction design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her art makes the digital tangible, with messages focusing on making the human experience more universally spiritual. Believing an artist must have a lot of tools in the toolbox, Kristen constantly seeks new technologies to enhance her art-making practice.

Behind the art

The idea for Kristen’s If Walls Could Sing is a celebration of the talent that comes to town to unite under the joy that is Lollapalooza, with the goal of creating corners that make people want to start singing. Using projection mapping, she has created a mural of light on traditional graffiti art of the most famous lyrics from the headliners. The corners become an animated physical manifestation of the musical weekend. Lyrics dance among Kristens fantastical Lollapalooza portals to prompt songs for the people on the street, continuing the party after the party.

Strauss’s murals revolve around the vast amount of culture in Chicago during the weekend of Lollapalooza. The artwork depicts scenes from the festival that portray 2 different points of view on each wall. One is from the crowd looking at the stage, and the other is from the stage looking at the diverse crowd. With these perspectives, Kalan is attempting to bridge the gap between the artists and festivalgoers to create one entity that thrives off each other. The artists and fans need each other, and this is Kalan’s way of bringing them together. The glitched clouds provide a surreal, imaginative, and technological platform to view other perspectives, an idealized form of social media, or false realities.

If you’re looking for an encore after the concerts, try exploring West Loop and heading over to Green Street and Randolph Street to see how Kalan and Kristen bring Lollapalooza to life (and also to get your Instagram-worthy moment in).

Posted by Uber Chicago

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