Programming video art for urban screens in public space

Using the case study of The Bigger Picture, a public art project in Manchester, UK, as its basis, this paper will discuss the practical experience of curating and commissioning moving image artworks for a large urban video screen in an outdoor environment. It will address the challenges of negotiating the relationship between a non-immersive exhibition point and a transient audience in a public space. Detailing experiments with content and scheduling, it will illustrate the potential pitfalls and possibilities for models of programming.