Troika has been commissioned by Artwise Curators to create a signature piece at the entrance of the new British Airways luxury lounges in Heathrow Terminal 5. In response, we created ‘Cloud’, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. Flip-dots were conventionally used in the 70s and 80s to create signs in train-stations and airports. We were fascinated by their materiality, by the way they physically flip from one side to the other. The sound they generate is also instantly reminiscent of travel, and we therefore decided to explore their aesthetic potential in ‘Cloud’.

By audibly flipping between black and silver, the flip-dots create mesmerising waves as they chase across the surface of ‘Cloud’. Reflecting its surrounding colours, the mechanical mass is transformed into an organic form that appears to come alive, shimmering and flirting with the onlookers that pass by from both above and below.

via: www.troika.uk.com

In 2002, Ned Kahn worked with the staff of Technorama, the major science center in Switzerland, and their architects, Durig and Rami, to create a facade for the building which is composed of thousands of aluminum panels that move in the air currents and reveal the complex patterns of turbulence in the wind. The facade is visible from the large urban plaza in front of the museum.

Troika has been commissioned by Artwise Curators to create ‘All the time in the world’, a 22m long electroluminescent wall that marks the entrance to the First and Concorde Galleries lounges in the new Heathrow Terminal 5. ‘All the time in the World’ extends the conventional notion of a world clock, which commonly concentrates on capital cities in different time zones, by linking real time to places with exciting and romantic associations.

For ‘All the time in the world’ we developed a new typology of electroluminescent displays, called ‘Firefly’, which relies on a custom-designed segmented typeface (patent pending.) Apart form its incredible thinness (less than a millimeter), our display boosts high aesthetic impact and an extreme versatility in the characters displayed (up to five different fonts can be shown in our arrangement). This modular approached also allowed us to animate the letters as if they were hand written onto the display, a feature that was at the very origin of our research.

The resulting display has unique properties: it doesn’t cast light and disturbing shadow on its surrounding, it can be curved, and is extremely competitive compared to other display technologies such as LED if text only is required. Based on a vectorial design, its advantages are all the more noticeable in large scale (like here) or very small. The technique is transferable to other emerging technology such as OLED, PLED or E-paper. This is the first time that a display system of this kind has been implemented worldwide.

via: troika.uk.com

On October 6, Pleinmuseum visited Paris, as part of the Nuit Blanche. In cooperation with the Institut Néerlandais, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, and the city of Paris, the pavilion stroke down at Place de la Bastille.
Pleinmuseum is a mobile exhibition pavilion that places itself at the hearts of public life, opens as a flower, takes on new appearances every day and travels on after a while. Every evening from sunset Pleinmuseum will present a variety of the 100% digital collection. In each location also new artists are invited to create a new contribution to Pleinmuseum.

Pleinmuseum is a new concept: an open and flexible museum that is approachable and accessible, placed on a square in the city centre, forming a natural part of urban life. During daytime, the pavilion remains closed and as such symbolically refers to the ‘white cube’, the paradigmatic model of the modernist museum. After sunset, the cube opens itself hydraulically and forms a dynamic architectural installation that embraces space. The white walls become projection screens that continually take on new appearances, like the skin of a chameleon. In this manner, Pleinmuseum becomes a temporary stage for visual communication; a platform through which artists and designers can communicate with a broad audience.
The designer of Pleinmuseum, René van Engelenburg, focuses on the relationship between art and public. He intends to develop projects, mostly mobile, temporary and open architectural structures that forge a dynamic relationship with public space, activating this space as the key physical and conceptual parameter for the ideas of the participating designers and artists.

via: pleinmuseum.nl

In 2007 The Graffiti Research Lab took control of the KPN Building, one of the permanent media facades, turning the area into the People´s Revolutionary Green Laser Light District, a place to display your uncurated animations and graphics. The back-side of the building is becoming a giant wall you can write on with a BFL (big fucking laser).

via: urbanscreens.org

La Porte is located at the entrance to the Shinsaibashi shopping area, which is one of the most famous upmarket districts featuring high-end department store and super brand boutiques. (like Ginza at Tokyo)

The main Design should remind of a beautiful shining women, so the whole building shimmers in emerald green at night, using fluorescent lamps.

The west wall has a large LED display (54m in height and 4.8m in width / 12 000 sources) which is one of the highest in Japan. It´s shape is half-spiral, in other words it is a helical or twisted surface. Before it has never been possible to correspond to three dimensional architecture with standard LED Screen. Due to the unique abilities the of used Kapas Led-Cluster; flexibility,durability and lightweight, Komanden was enabled to make the client’s concept reality. It displays memorable messages for passersby showing elaborated images and making good use of the vertically long shape, by expressing each season in the midst of the urban area.

Design by : Plantec Architects Inc.
Construction by :Taisei Corporation
LED Screen by: Komaden Corporation

The Source, an eight storey high kinetic sculpture, is the new symbol for the London Stock Exchange. Every morning, millions of viewers around the world will watch the installation come to life, signifying the opening of the London Markets.

Visitors to the atrium are greeted by this motion: its particles rising and falling, generating an infinite range of figurative and abstract shapes that rise, dissolve and reform at different heights in the atrium. The shape of the sun rising on a new day of trade, the names and positions of currently traded stocks, the DNA helix at the center of life formed by the work, and floating in the 32m void of the atrium.

The Smource is formed from a grid of cables arranged in a square, 162 cables in all, reaching eight stories to the glass roof. Nine spheres are mounted on each cable and are free to move independently up and down its length. In essence the spheres act like animated pixels, able to odel any shape in three dimensions a fluid, dynamic, three dimensional television.

via: greyworld

16ⁿ _ ƒ5³ is an interactive kinetic light sculpture, extending the bi-dimensional screen space, by transposition of its pixel resolution to the physical space. Conceived as a modular infrastructure, 16ⁿ _ ƒ5³ is a communication and computation system, propagating in form of light and sound, the events it inhabits. Presence and motion create and alter the transmitted data, and propagation of this data becomes a space-time parameter.

ƒ5³ _ framework 5*5*5 refers to informatics’ modular workspace, called a framework. Here, ƒ5³ ’s “frames” constitute the framework, a space built up by five modules of 2*2m, divided in 5*5 squared elements, establishing a matrix of 5*5*5 = 125 modules. At the one side diffusing the light (white) and at the other side absorbing the light ( black ), the modules constitute a binary language (0,1) and a space of 125 pixels, allowing to transcribe captured data from the physical environment in a kinetic and luminous play _ in between opening and closing, in between transparency and reflection, in between light and dark.

via: www.lab-au.com

The Aquatics Centre in Bejing, commonly known as the Water Cube, will be the home for nearly all of the 2008 Summer Olympics aquatic events. This unusual venue spans some 80,000 square meters, and will have approximately 440,000 LEDs embedded throughout the structure.

The Water Cube integrates the geometry of water bubbles into a rectangular, plastic structure. LED lighting fixtures will illuminate the bubble designs from inside the structure’s translucent walls, allowing the entire building to glow with extraordinary color-changing LED light.

via:ledsmagazine.com, beijing2008.com

Flow 5.0 is an interactive sculpture by Studioroosegaarde made out of hundreds of ventilators which are reacting to your sound and motion. By walking and interacting an illusive landscape of transparancies and artificial winds is created.

Moving through Flow 5.0 the visitor becomes conscious of himself as a body,
in a dynamic relation with space and technology.

via: Mirjam Struppek - Urban Screens