Art for all’ is a public art installation created by artist Celyn Bricker with the support of the curatorial team Continuous Regeneration (RGRT), and installed in Shanghai’s Plaza 66. The work is designed to prevent bird collisions with glass: it combines a visible AI generated pattern with sections of ultraviolet material that are visible only to certain birds, but invisible to humans except under special lighting conditions.

The pattern used in the work is based on a reinterpretation of the work of 19th Century British Artist William Morris, reimagined using artificial intelligence. As an early environmentalist, Morris believed that humans needed a connection to nature to live a ‘truly human life’, and for him design was the way to achieve that in an industrialising society. The piece ‘Art for All’ similarly aims to use art and design to recreate that connection to the natural world, as well as both communicating and providing a solution to the biodiversity issue of bird collisions with glass. Through the use of both AI and UV technology, the work also invites the audience to consider design from a ‘non human’ perspective, and to think about how our urban environments might look if designed from the perspective of the natural world.

Celyn Bricker will collaborate with Continuous Regeneration (RGRT) to deliver workshops and public programming to raise public awareness of the issue of bird collisions, as well as introducing possible creative solutions to the problem. This accompanies an ongoing research project co-initiated by Celyn in 2021 and lead by Faye Lu with CYCAN and Duke Kunshan University, conducting the first nation-wide research into the issue of bird collisions in China.