Data Gallery

Paint Portal Public Art Gallery

A static Three.js prototype that turns Chicago Parks Public Art records and cited artwork photos into a neon, first-person gallery.

By Eric Rhea GameLab prototype Status: Playable static app

The prototype uses a local City of Chicago public-art dataset and locally cached Chicago Park District artwork photos. It is an exploratory gallery treatment, not an official city map or collection record.

Paint Portal Public Art Gallery neon city with glowing paths, artwork-photo portals, and voxel skyline panels
Paint Portal Public Art Gallery stages Chicago park artworks as photo-backed portals inside a neon voxel city.

High-Level Overview

Paint Portal Public Art Gallery is a GameLab experiment in making civic art records feel walkable. It starts with the Chicago Parks Public Art dataset, attaches cited Chicago Park District artwork photos, then places those works inside a first-person Three.js city made of neon paths, skyline blocks, tram lines, data trees, and portal zones.

The interface keeps the data visible: the selected-art card shows the artwork title, artist, park context, and source link while the scene gives each record a more spatial memory hook than a list or map alone.

What the Prototype Lets You Do

  • Launch a static browser gallery with local Three.js r185 modules and no server-side runtime.
  • Move through a neon public-art city using keyboard or mobile movement controls.
  • Select Chicago park artworks, inspect their metadata, and open cited photo-source links.
  • Enter portal zones that turn selected artwork records into photo-backed visual spaces.
  • Open citations and credits panels that keep the dataset and photo provenance close to the experience.

Source Backbone

The source layer combines a small public CSV with a locally cached photo-citation bundle so the static app can stay inspectable and self-contained.

Local dataset chicago_parks_public_art.csv, retrieved 2026-07-02, with 194 data rows and 10 columns.
Photo layer 154 cited Chicago Park District artwork photos are cached locally and paired to public-art records where available.
Runtime shape Static HTML, CSS, JavaScript modules, local Three.js, local bloom postprocessing, generated cutscene art, and public-art photo assets.

Build Detail

The app runs as a plain static project: index.html, project-local styles, ES modules, generated data modules, cached artwork photos, local Three.js, and local postprocessing bloom through EffectComposer, RenderPass, UnrealBloomPass, and OutputPass.

Generated cutscene images define the visual direction: Wet Graffiti Cel for the paint-portal idea and Tron Punk Bloom for the neon city treatment.

Related builds

Micromobility Riot Map is another city-data visual treatment. Transporter TSI Riot uses public transportation data in an interactive scene. NASAPD is another data-backed WebGL environment with local postprocessing.