two new public artworks
from a project highlighting the city's history.
Two new additions to the Hidden Creeks Project were celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning.
The Hidden Creeks Project is a multi-year initiative designed to educate the public about the buried waters of Mill Creek beneath the city.
Local artists, historians, and environmental scientists worked together to tell the story of the 1915 Mill Creek flood, the evolution of the Mill Creek Tube, and recent efforts to protect the region's natural waterways.
Behind the FEED Media Art Center on Commerce Street, the Hidden Creeks public art project bridges traditional public art with interactive media. Brad Ford built the augmented reality component for the mural, turning a painted wall into an interactive look at local history.
The AR experience features a short video covering a major turning point in the city's history. It walks viewers through the 1915 flood, the community's recovery, and the construction of "the tube"—the massive underground conduit built to control the creek and stop future flooding.
Ford handled both the artwork and software development for the project. Instead of using off-the-shelf tracking tools, he wrote a custom AR engine to handle spatial tracking and video delivery. This custom backend keeps the digital overlay locked to the physical mural without the performance issues common in web-based AR setups.
On the creative side, Ford restored and animated archival photographs of the disaster and the city's response. By giving motion to the historical imagery, the project lets viewers point their devices at the mural to watch the floodwaters, the city's rebuild, and the tube's construction unfold directly over the artwork.
For more information, visit hiddencreeks.org.
