“nature04″ is a public project, transforming the 20 story Lilleurope Tower into a luminous kinetic sculpture. It´s dramaturgy is based on the idea of a jaquemart, a mechanical public clockwork, the basis of our technologically advanced culture. The mechanical clock, giving the time by slicing it up in standardized temporal units, marks the final transition from experiencing time as a continuum without a beginning and an end to perceiving it as sequential, as a sequence of discrete events lined up on a timeline.
“nature04″ is taking the concepts of time, sequence and the matrix to create a contemporary jaquemart, an ephemeral clockwork composed of animated lights, a clock of light displaying specific kinetic patterns and prints throughout the night. In cycles, bursts of light spread over the sides of the tower and then, subside again, like a wave that has washed ashore and emptied itself. Eventually there is only darkness and stillness - the tower rests as if exhausted by all the excitement displayed. Regaining “consciousness” at specific moments, these light patterns, often display static icons on the screen at the conclusion of a sequence of waves, functioning like punctuation marks along the timeline.
GreenPix - Zero Energy Media Wall - is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital mediatechnology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympics.Featuring the largest color LED display worldwide and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China, the building performs as a self-sufficient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle.The Media Wall will provide the city of Beijing with its first venue dedicated to digital media art, while offering the most radical example of sustainable technology applied to an entire building’s envelope to date. The building will open to the public in May 2008, with a specially commissioned program of video installations and live performances by artists from China, Europe and the US.The project was designed and implemented by Simone Giostra & Partners, a New York-based office with a solid reputation for its innovative curtain walls in Europe and the US, with lighting design and façade engineering by Arup in London and Beijing. Content manager Luisa Gui will coordinate the opening program with software development by New York-based media artist Jeremy Rotsztain.
Greenpix behaves like an organic system, absorbing solar energy during the day and then generating light from the same power that evening. The project promotes the uncompromised integration of sustainable technology in new Chinese architecture, responding to the aggressive and unregulated economic development currently undertaken by the industry, often at the expense of the environment.With the support of leading German manufacturers Schueco and SunWays, the architect Simone Giostra with Arup developed a new technology for laminating photovoltaic cells in a glass curtain wall and oversaw the production of the first glass solar panels by Chinese manufacturer SunTech. The polycrystalline photovoltaic cells are laminated within the glass of the curtain wall and placed with changing density on the entire building’s skin.The density pattern increases building’s performance, allowing natural light when required by interior program, while reducing heat gain and transforming excessive solar radiation into energy for the media wall.
GreenPix is a large-scale display comprising of 2,292 color (RGB) LED’s light points comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. (2.200 m2) monitor screen for dynamic content display. The very large scale and the characteristic low resolution of the screen enhances the abstract visual qualities of the medium, providing an art-specific communication form in contrast to commercial applications of high resolution screens in conventional media façades.
JetBlue knows its customers, thanks to an innovative traveling exhibit designed to capture its passengers’ innermost thoughts.
Known as “The Story Booth,” the interactive exhibit encouraged visitors to share their favorite JetBlue stories, which were filmed for use on the airline’s website and in its advertising campaigns. In order to attract visitors to the exhibit during its 10-city tour, the exterior had to be dynamic and eye catching. Color Kinetics’ LED lighting technology proved to be just the right tool.
The booth measured 16 feet long by 10.5 feet high, enclosing a simple automated audio/video recording system to capture visitors’ stories. To animate the booth’s exterior, 10,000 nodes of iColor Flex® SL were mounted behind translucent panels installed on a steel frame on one side of the booth. Additionally, 700 larger nodes of iColor Flex SLX were installed on the two adjoining sides of the booth, essentially wrapping it with points of dynamic light. The nodes are individually addressable, which allows them to act as pixels for low-resolution video displays.
Because the booth was built to travel, durability and simplicity were paramount. The low power draw of the iColor Flex SL and iColor Flex SLX nodes allowed for easy set-up in each city without complex electrical requirements. “We had a whole video wall that used less than four 20-amp circuits of power, which is very low considering the scale of 10,700 nodes,” said Lazer. The booth was transported from city-to-city by flatbed truck with the entire Color Kinetics installation remaining intact.
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.
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.
Filed under: Projects
Posted: April 9, 2008 at 9:43 am by Wolfgang Leeb
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.
MIKONTALOLIGHTS seems to be inspired by the good old blinkenlight project, both in respect to aesthetics and enthusiasm. Here’s what their website says:
“Over the years TOAS Mikontalo has been residence for thousands of students from all over the world. ‘Mikkis’ is one of the best known (both liked and disliked) dormitories in Finland. With the currently ongoing renovation, Mikontalo will be reborn. However, before this, one thing had to be done… MIKONTALOLIGHTS.
The object of MIKONTALOLIGHTS was to create the world’s physically largest colored graphics platform by using the windows of Mikontalo’s D-staircase as light pixels. The platform was used to play Tetris and other games and present demos created by the students of Tampere University of Technology. The project climax was on December the 4th when the new lights of Mikontalo were lit. The goal was to gain global visibility for Tampere University of Technology and the rich student culture of the Uni.
The public event of MIKONTALOLIGHTS was a tremendous success. There were more than 2000 spectators at once and total count of interested spectators was close to 4000.”
This is my presentation at the Media Architecture Conference in London in Sept. 2007. with voice and better image quality.
If you want to see the presentation full screen go here and press icon “full”.
The text version is available here.
Keywords:
MediaArchitecture definition (first try), challenges, tag cloud, media facade typologies, facade structure, display structure, building automation, led
Filed under: Theory
Posted: March 7, 2008 at 3:40 pm by Gernot Tscherteu
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.
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).
