:: Workshop 4: Design Challenges and Software Solutions Behind the Biennale Installations

Hosts: Oliver Schürer, Gernot Tscherteu – Media Architecture Institute, Austria The installations shown outside on the facade of the Künstlerhaus “Dynamic Ornament 1.2″, and the “BoxLEDs” installation in the center of the great exhibition hall serve as basis to discuss various challanges for media architecture projects, concerning artistic concepts and goals, hard- and software, architecture construction and media contents. Participants get an insight to the control software, hardware equipment and can discuss with architects, designers, artists and engineers involved. Speakers:

Speakers – Abstract and Biography

::: Oliver Schürer – Biography Author, Curator, Editor, Senior Scientist at the Department of Architecture Theory Vienna University of Technology. Numerous international publications on technology and economy in Architecture. Recent books are ‘architektur:consulting’ and ‘Berufsfeld Architektur 1.0’. Visiting Researcher at the Departement of CAAD at the ETH Zürich 2006-09. Here he founded together with Georg Vrachliotis the research area ‘Theory of Technology in Architecture’ in 2007. Together with Gernot Tscherteu he founded the ‘Media Architecture Group’, 2005 and in 2010 the ‚Media Architecture Institute’. In 2007 he was co-curator of the Media Architecture Conference, London St. Martin. In 2008 he was curator of the Media Facades Conference Berlin 2008 and co-curator of Media Facades Festival 2008,
 Berlin. Current area of research ‘The Automation of Architecture’. ::: Bernd Clauß – Biography Dipl. Ing. (FH) Construction Management, Master of Engineering in Project management | University Biberach. Perennial experience in project management of façade construction projects. Currently international project manager for LED façade lighting at Zumtobel lighting GmbH. Project manager for LED façade backlighting BMW Museum Munich (D); façade illumination Nordwesthaus Fussach (AT); façade Illumination Bauarena Volketswill (CH), media display University of Darmstadt (D), media façade illumination Zillina Mirage shopping (SK), media façade Cheonan Galleria (SOK) …
::: Wolfgang Heigerth – lightmesh: A controller application for Artnet-protocol driven media facades. If the need should arise in the future, support for other protocols might be added as well. lightmesh is written entirely in pure Java, which makes it completely portable. That means, it can run without change on all major desktop operating systems like Linux, MacOS and Windows. It is currently used in production on a MacBook, powering a CAPIX media facade by Zumtobel Lighting GmbH, which is on display during the exhibition. In order to work with a wide variety of media formats effortlessly, lightmesh’s main input source is a configurable screen capture area on the controlling personal computer’s graphical user interface. The earliest implementation of this concept was originally realized by a fellow web developer, Mr. Manfred Wuits. lightmesh grabs the screen’s content inside this area and applies an averaging algorithm, in order to reduce the high resolution of the original media content to the typically lower resolution of the media facade. This is done repeatedly in rapid succession, so that any media content placed within the capture area is processed in real-time. The advantage of this technique is obvious: Without explicitly having to deal with a plethora of possible input formats, any visible media (be it dynamic or static) which can be played back on the controlling personal computer, may immediately be brought onto the “big screen” of the media facade with ease. In consideration of the original use case, namely a variable re-usable media facade with changing resolution and geometry, lightmesh is able to use dynamic mappings between the screen’s pixels and the corresponding pixels on the facade. Changing the resolution and/or geometry of the media facade merely means a one-time configuration step to reflect this change in lightmesh. To make it possible to create content for the media facade directly, a plug-in system for dynamically created content was devised. Plug-ins are based on the popular processing.org language and framework, which is widely used by animators and artists around the world. As processing.org is itself written in Java, it integrates seamlessly with lightmesh – and it is even considerably easier to drive your animations forward than in the original processing.org environment. What is more, all dynamically created content is realized in the facade’s native resolution, which makes it much easier to generate sharp and distinct shapes, e.g. for ticker text etc. Any dynamically created content may moreover have transparent parts and lie on top of the media content captured from the screen. These two possibilities of creating content for the media facade are completed by a “playlist” feature, which allows for different pieces of content to be played back e.g. at certain times of day or in an endless loop, each piece for a predefined period of time.
::: Alexander Kirk- Colorillo ist eigentlich eine Webseite zum kollaborativen Malen. Gleichzeitig ermöglicht es dessen Technik auch auf Medienfassaden zu malen
Alexander Kirk- Biography Alexander Kirk is a web application programmer situated in Vienna. After he completed his master’s degree of computer sciences at the Vienna University of Technology, he co-founded the french web portal Netvibes. Besides creating applications in contract work, he maintains his own web applications: Factolex–a lexicon that bases the explanations on single facts–and Colorillo–a page where people can collaboratively draw at the same time. ::: Catherine Ludwig – Biography 1976 born in Wolfratshausen, Germany since 2002 living and working in Vienna, Austria 2009 birth of my daughter Lenzi Education: 1997-02 Communication Design at Georg-Simon-Ohm Polytechnical University, Nürnberg 2002 Diploma: computer based training – basics of audio technics (CD-ROM with sounds, photos &videos) 2002-06 Visual Media Art at the University of Applied Arts, Prof. Kowanz, Vienna 2006 Diploma : „aus/sicht“ space installation Art projects and (solo)exhibitions (selection): 2003 MAK NITE „SMS on LED“, MAK, pillar hall, Vienna 2003 Group Exhibition ,“IN(N) s TAL LAcTION“ Tiroler Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck 2004 Group Exhibition, „Real Presence Generation 04“ , Museum 25th of May, Belgrade 2005 Solo Exhibition „Controlled Leisure Time – Tropical Islands“, Bétonsalon, MQW, Vienna 2005 Solo Exhibition „miniaturen“, Raum-Austausch, „To be continued“, Vienna 2006 VIDEOTHEKA, mobile video-archive, Ursula Blickle Lounge, Kunsthalle Vienna 2006 ALL NIGHT LONG, „Baywatch“, „Hongsi Lüyou“, Galerie König, Vienna 2006 Solo Exhibition „allianzen“, Kunsthalle Meidling, Vienna 2006 „aus/sicht“, Diploma, University of applied Arts, Vienna 2006 Group Exhibition, TAV Artist Village, Taipei 2006 Preis der Kunsthalle Wien 2006, Kunsthalle Wien, Project Space, Vienna 2007 „unORTnung“, Groupexhibition , Kaiserstraße 34, Vienna 2008 Solo Exhibition, Monat der Fotografie, Salon, Vienna 2009 „Living Spaces – Living Forms“, Galerie 5020, Salzburg 2009 experimental video „Sérenité“ to the composition of Burkhart Stangl, Radiokulturhaus, Vienna 2009 experimental video „Heute bin ich Held_in“ for a performance of znit, Flieger/WUK, Vienna 2010 „Transformers“ Kunstverein das weisse Haus, Vienna 2010 „tool time“ Flat1, Vienna 2010 „Media Architecture Biennale 2010“, Videoproduktion, Künstlerhaus, Vienna Residencies/ Prices: 2006 Artist-in-Residence, Artistvillage,Taipei 2006 „Preis der Kunsthalle Wien 2006“ 2007 Artist-in-Residence, Berlin 2008 Anni und Heinrich Sussmann-Stiftung: 2. Preis 2009 6-month Schindler grant with Wolf Leeb (substitute), California www.nocti-luca.com ::: Christoph Pacher – Biography Christoph Pacher is a visual designer of many media, aswell as an engineer of interactive systems, based in Vienna, Austria. After recieving his bachelor’s degree in “Media Technology and Design” from the University of applied Science Hagenberg, he is currently working on his diploma thesis for a master’s degree in “Media Informatics” at the Technical University Vienna. Besides his studies, he is doing freelance work in the area he cherishes most, telling stories with all the media he has at his disposal.
::: Christian Sellin – Biography Christian Sellin, Dipl. Ing. (FH) Medientechnik, studied media engineering (Medientechnik) at the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) Hamburg. In his diploma thesis, 2005 at Airbus KID Systeme, he researched color consistency problems in LED solutions for aircraft cabin lighting. As a freelance engineer he consulted light planners with their customized LED solutions. Besides, he did lighting design for opera and dance and traveled worldwide with various stage productions. Since 2010 Christian is a project manager at Traxon/E:cue in Cologne. In June 2010 he held a guest lecture on mediaarchitecture project planning at HAW Hamburg.
::: Martin Tomitsch – Designing the Urban User Experience Screens have become a ubiquitous feature of urban public and semi-public spaces. We find them in various types and sizes in places like train stations, public squares, pubs, cinemas, university campuses, to name but a few. This ubiquitous presence of screens has led to a phenomenon that was described as ‘display blindness’. The increasing amount of digital content available around us if often considered as information pollution. Yet, urban screens offer an opportunity to increase the experience of public and semi- public places. Key aspects towards designing more engaging and relevant screens are a careful consideration of context and content, but also the ability to allow individuals to interact with such screens. This workshop is a forum for discussion of aspects around the design of urban screens and user interactions in urban spaces that involve screens. Topics addressed in this workshop include, but are not limited to:
  • Techniques for interacting with media facades
  • Crowd interaction in public spaces
  • Cross-screen interaction
  • Interaction design and urban spaces
  • Designing for engaging user interaction
Martin Tomitsch – Biography Martin Tomitsch is a lecturer at the Design Lab, an interdisciplinary research group within the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. He is founding member of the Media Architecture Institute and one of the curators of the Media Architecture Biennale. He has a background in informatics with a focus on interaction design. His research involves the design of interactive experiences and the exploration of new forms of interaction to elicit user engagement and social interaction in everyday environments. Print This Page Print This Page