If you’ve walked by the Wilson Arts Plaza at Emily Carr in the last couple of months, chances are you’ve noticed the giant screen projecting a video of an animated landscape evolving throughout the course of a day: a smiling sun gradually giving way to a shifty-eyed moon, followed by three people having a discussion over a campfire in an unfamiliar language. There are no subtitles to satisfy your curiosity as to what is being said. Instead, Cole Pauls (BFA 2015), the artist behind the animation, entitled K’ānäthät​ (Thinking), is inviting the audience to be an active participant rather than a passive spectator. “I want you to project your own thoughts into maybe what they’re talking about and what they’re discussing throughout the middle of the night into the morning,” he says.

Premiering last October, K’ānäthät (Thinking) is a project Cole was commissioned to create by the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program for Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s urban screen. Since its inception, the outdoor screen, which is an initiative in conjunction with the Libby Leshgold Gallery at ECU, has shown the works of Barry Doupé, Dana Claxton, and Marina Roy, making Cole the latest in an illustrious line of notable artists to have been commissioned by the city.

After previously collaborating with the city on the artwork for a handful of utility boxes around Vancouver, Cole’s creation of K’ānäthät​ (Thinking) is a natural and inevitable progression. “I guess I developed a relationship with them [so] that they thought of me when they were inviting people to submit to this project because I believe that there were only five or six of us that were invited to pitch,” he says, adding, “And I just luckily was chosen.”

Full article by Perrin Grauer: cole-pauls-kānäthät-thinking-plays-on-ecus-outdoor-screen