A new public artwork

The Hidden Creeks Project is a multi-year initiative to educate the public about Mill Creek, which flows buried beneath the city. Local artists, historians, and environmental scientists collaborated to tell the story of the 1915 Mill Creek flood, the creation of the Mill Creek Tube, and current efforts to protect the region's natural waterways.

One of the new additions, located behind the FEED Media Art Center on Commerce Street, combines traditional public art with interactive media. Artist and technologist Brad Ford built an augmented reality (AR) layer for the mural, turning the painted wall into an interactive window on local history.

When visitors point a phone or tablet at the mural, a short video plays over the artwork. It covers one of the most important turning points in the city's history: the 1915 flood, the community's recovery, and the construction of "the Tube," the massive underground conduit built to contain the creek and prevent future flooding.

Ford handled both the artwork and the software. Rather than relying on off-the-shelf tracking tools, he wrote a custom AR engine to manage spatial tracking and video delivery. This keeps the digital overlay firmly locked to the physical mural, avoiding the lag and drift common in web-based AR.

On the creative side, Ford restored and animated archival photographs of the disaster and the city's response. Viewers can watch the floodwaters rise, the city rebuild, and the Tube take shape, all unfolding directly over the painted wall.

For more information, visit hiddencreeks.org.