A city bus is about to become one of the most talked-about pieces of art at BLINK 2026, and the people who built it are still working on their undergraduate degrees. Northern Kentucky University students have spent the year partnering with the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky to wire up a moving bus with 35,000 LED lights, video projections, cameras, original sound and sculptural elements for an installation called Beyond the Bridge.
A Bus That Watches You Back
The piece is designed to react to the people experiencing it: video projections will show live camera feeds of viewers standing on the opposite side of the bus, and the installation responds to onlookers with its own lights and sound, according to Cincinnati CityBeat. The concept is meant to represent connections between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and more literally, the bridges linking the two sides of the Ohio River. When BLINK returns October 8-11, the bus will carry that message through the streets alongside the rest of the festival, which BLINK's own event guide describes as the nation's largest free public art event, transforming more than 35 city blocks across Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.
About 10 students are leading the creative team, with additional students and faculty mentors involved, the outlet reports. They joined the project in March and started brainstorming from there, eventually landing on the bridge-and-connection concept that now anchors the installation.
From Sculpture Class to Bridge Piers
Savannah Koch, a studio arts major at NKU, serves as the project's production assistant lead and sculptor. Her hands-on work has included building the bridge piers and taking measurements for the installation, the same report notes. Koch has said the project is larger in scope than any sculpture she's previously created on her own.
Lead students were hired and compensated to keep developing the installation through the summer, collaborating both virtually and in person, per the CityBeat account.
Design Meets Project Management
Elle Chenault, an NKU visual communication design student, is one of Beyond the Bridge's lead designers. Chenault has said the project differs substantially from her regular coursework, and that she's wanted to pursue graphic design since fifth grade, according to the same account.
Beyond making art, students took on responsibilities that stretched well past the creative side, gaining experience with supplying, distributing and ordering materials within a budget larger than they typically manage for individual projects. Candice van Loveren Geis, head of NKU's Art & Design program and a teaching professor of art education, is leading the BLINK team alongside the students and faculty mentors. Geis has said the students are effectively gaining experience as junior designers and project managers, the report states.
Building Resumes Before Graduation
That kind of real-world exposure lines up with NKU's broader push to give undergraduates professional experience before they graduate, the same source notes, with BLINK opportunities helping students build resumes and develop industry skills through one of the region's largest arts festivals.
This isn't the university's first turn behind the wheel on a TANK bus project. In 2024, NKU's School of the Arts and College of Informatics students collaborated with TANK for that year's BLINK opening parade, redesigning a bus and creating wearable, light-up costumes centered on the theme “Let it shine on sustainable transit,” according to a LINK nky press release. That earlier BLINK ran October 17-20, 2024, with its opening ceremony and parade at dusk on the first night. Beyond the Bridge picks up that partnership two years later with a far more technically ambitious build, one that swaps a static bus redesign for a fully interactive installation loaded with cameras, sound and thousands of LEDs.
