The City as a Digital Public Art Network
bashobits, Rush Hour All Day All Night, from Freedom of Mobility, 2024. Moving-image still.
Tokyo is filled with public digital screens, most of them built as commercial infrastructure. The same network can also become cultural infrastructure: a distributed system that welcomes digital art into everyday public life.
Advertising still dominates these displays, but artists, curators, cultural organisations, venues and screen operators are increasingly exploring what else is possible. A screen can become a door for the imagination.
In 2026, two works by bashobits became part of this transformation in Tokyo. In February, Aura Afterglow was shown at MIYASHITA PARK in Weather Writes, part of NEORT's SCREENS CONTEXTUALIZED, an official program of DIG SHIBUYA. In June, Rush Hour All Day All Night was presented by NEORT and Artcrush in MADE FOR THIS CITY across large public digital displays in Ginza, Shibuya, Harajuku and Omotesando. While the specific details of each exhibition varied, they offered shared lessons and inspiration about what digital art can become when it moves beyond personal devices into the streets.
bashobits, Aura Afterglow, from Freedom of Mobility, 2024. Moving-image still.
An artist may create the work but the public encounter is part of a system. Bringing digital art into the city depends on co-operation among artists, curators, organisations such as NEORT and Artcrush, venues, screen operators, technical teams and many other people who make these encounters possible, including the people moving along the streets.
bashobits, Rush Hour All Day All Night, from Freedom of Mobility, 2024. Presented in Tokyo as part of MADE FOR THIS CITY, 2026. Image via NEORT.
There is no single correct way to experience public digital art. An office worker in a rush may see only a few seconds of a work before continuing to their next destination. A tourist with more time may stop and watch an entire loop. A person working outdoors may notice the same work repeatedly during the day. Those encounters might interrupt a routine, provoke a thought, change the way someone notices their surroundings, or simply make them smile.
bashobits, Rush Hour All Day All Night, from Freedom of Mobility, 2024. Presented in Tokyo as part of MADE FOR THIS CITY, 2026. Image via NEORT.
There is another reason these urban displays are especially meaningful for Mobility works by bashobits. Mobility is an imagined nonhuman species of transport systems. Its world is built around vehicles and the environments they navigate. For Mobility, the city is a habitat. When a work about Mobility appears on a public screen while cars, trains, buses, and people move through the streets around it, the artwork enters the same transport ecology it imagines. Traffic, architecture, weather, reflections, surrounding screens and constant movement become part of the art experience. A moving-image work thrives in a world that is already moving.
bashobits, Rush Hour All Day All Night, from Freedom of Mobility, 2024. Presented in Tokyo as part of MADE FOR THIS CITY, 2026. Image via NEORT.
The two Tokyo exhibitions are examples of a larger possibility in cities around the world. Digital infrastructure already exists throughout many of our public spaces. Some of it can become cultural infrastructure too. This does not mean replacing every advertisement with art. It means opening more moments in everyday life when a screen can serve a different purpose. When those moments multiply across streets, neighbourhoods and cities, individual screens become something larger. The city itself begins to function as a digital public art network.