New App Re+Public Lets You See Street Art Over Time at The Bowery Mural Wall

The owners of the Bowery Mural Wall have commissioned contemporary artists to paint gorgeous murals at this location since a Keith Haring piece in 1982. Currently, Brooklyn street artist Swoon has a piece on display–a Hurricane Sandy tribute–at Houston Street and Bowery. Last week Animal New York covered a cool app called Re+Public which uses your smartphone camera to visualize historical murals and street art. ”

A creative collaboration between The Heavy Projects (LA) and PublicAdCampaign (NYC), Re+Public is born out of a mutual interest in democratizing access to our shared visual environment.” The app was created as a way to visualize uses for urban public space, and through their collaborators the designers were able to create a function allowing us to look back at previous iterations of the Bowery Mural.

To use the app, all you have to do is aim your phone’s camera at Swoon’s piece on the wall, and you can swipe through some of the previous murals that were there. Some of the artists include: Keith Haring, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey, and JR.

Re+Public currently “augments the reality” of three locations so far: New York City’s Bowery Mural, St. Louis’ Moto Wall, and Miami’s Wynwood Walls. They plan to enhance their “digital visions” in 2013, as their mission statement explains:

Re+Public’s mobile application digitally resurfaces walls and buildings in urban centers by overlaying digital content onto the physical environment. In doing so, Re+Public challenges our notions [of] private property boundaries and user access. It is our hope that the future city will come alive with public interests by opening access to our common walls in new and exciting ways.

Check out how the app worked for Andy Cush at Animal NY, and download it for free on iPhone or Android to try it yourself!

Get in touch with the author @uptownvoice.