Projekty:

1. Hand from Above

October 13th, 2009

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

By far one of the most interesting urban screens project I’ve seen to date, Chris O’Shea’s
describes his public art “Hand From Above” as encouraging “us to question our normal
routine when we often find ourselves rushing from one destination to another.”

“Inspired by Land of the Giants and Goliath, we are reminded of mythical stories by
mischievously unleashing a giant hand from the BBC Big Screen. Passers by will be playfully
transformed. What if humans weren’t on top of the food chain? Unsuspecting pedestrians will
be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity.” Hands from
Above was built using openFrameworks & openCV.

2. fLUX, Binary Waves – Lab[au] hertz jak wiatr! Dodatkowy 5. żywioł!

Another great project by LAb[au], “fLUX binary waves” is an urban and cybernetic
installation based on the measuring of infrastructural ( passengers, cars…) and
communicational ( electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones, radio…) flows and
their transposition into luminous, sonic and kinetic rules.

This relation between the installation and the urban activity happens in real time and sets each
person as an element of the installation, as a centre of the public realm. The installation fLUX,
binary waves is constituted by a network of 32 rotating and luminous panels of 3 meter-high
and 60 centimetres wide, placed every 3 meters to form a kinetic wall.

The panels rotate around their vertical axis, and have a black reflective surface on one side,
the other being plain mat white. Their rotation is controlled by microprocessors, allowing to
determine precisely the rotation speed and angle, while their networking allows to
synchronise the movement of the 32 panels.

The microprocessors are connected to infrared sensors, capturing the surrounding

infrastructural flows, defining the frequency and amplitude of the rotation. According to this
set up, each impulse is transmitted from one panel to the other, describing visual waves
running from one side of the installation to the other, and then bouncing back while
progressively loosing oscillation. All these principles relate the ‘micro-events’ happening in
the area to a unified play of light, colours and sounds directly derived from the rhythm of the
city flows.

As such, the installation proposes an urban sign having as subject the ‘urban’ and as message
to be a catalyst of urbanity via the transcription of urban flows in a contemporary play of
kinetics, lights and sound.
3. Jason Bruges Studio – Wind to Light

At the Tate last saturday Jason Bruges Studio talked about a number of their recent projects
including this one called ‘wind to light’ which you may have seen featured in the press earlier
in the summer, Jason described how it was created to inspire people to think creatively about
the spaces that surround them and explore the sustainable alternatives to developing our built
environment.

‘Wind to light’ is a custom built, site-specific installation consisting of 500 miniature wind
turbines directly generating the power to illuminate hundreds of integrally mounted LEDs
(light-emitting diodes). the effect is to create ‘firefly-like fields of light’ where the wind can
be visualized as an ephemeral electronic cloud in the atmosphere. the turbine and LED
modules are attached to their base by flexible poles which allow them to slightly sway in the
wind, animating the movement of the wind by a digital, electronic means.

The self-powered, autonomous installation illustrates the simplicity and directness of wind
power and its potential, literally and symbolically closing the gap between power generation
and consumption. wind to light presents wind power in a visually tangible way and one that is
characterised primarily by its resultant output rather than process. it eloquently illustrates the
silent power of wind. Wind to light presents the perspective that wind power can be an
attractive or even potentially beautiful addition to the landscape, contrary to many widespread
opinions that wind turbines are a man-made, visual and physical intrusion upon scenery and
its natural beauty.

The relocation of wind power from the rural environment to urban surroundings literally
brings it closer to us and suggests that as our requirements from wind power have evolved
since the use of windmills so should our attitudes towards its application and location. perhaps
wind turbines are more suited within the man made environment than nature where they are
alien and their need is divorced from them.

4. Touch

Touch is a project by the Belgian digital design and art lab, LAb[au], Laboratory for
Architecture and Urbanism. The project takes as a starting point Brussels’ 145 m high Dexia
Tower, from which 4200 windows can be individually colour-enlightened, by RGB-led bars,
turning the façade into an immense display.
See the Live Video Feed

Instead of considering this infrastructure as a flat screen (surface) displaying pre-rendered

video loops, the project is working on the architectural characteristics of the tower and its
urban context. The characteristics of the building; orientation, volume, scale… are used as
parameters to set up a spatial, temporal and luminous concept, which moreover allows people
to directly interact with the tower.

On Place Rogier, at the bottom of the tower, a station is mounted where people can interact
either individually or collectively with the visual and luminous display (= the tower) through
a multi touch screen. Both static (touch) as dynamic input (gesture) is recognized to generate
an elementary graphical language of points, lines and surfaces combined with physical
behaviours (growth, weight, …) taking a monochromatic colour palette (background)
combined with black and white (graphical elements).

Once a composition is created, it can be sent as an electronic postcard with a snapshot from
the tower, taken from a distant location. It is also uploaded on the specific project website (
www.dexia-tower.com ) where people can retrieve their postcard, as electronic and printable
format, with Christmas and New Year’s wishes from Brussels. Artists: LAB[au] – Architects:
Philippe Samyn & Partners, M & J.M. Jaspers – J. Eyers & Partners – Lightning engineer:
Barbara Hediger

5. Colour by Numbers

Colour by numbers is a 72 meters high light installation at Telefonplan in Stockholm. "A

tower stands at Telefonplan. Austere, slim and dark; rising towards the sky like an
exclamation mark. A tower is an archetypical creator of place: it breaks in and becomes an
event in a continuous landscape. This characteristic is emphasized by the illuminated
windows of this particular tower – but the patterns and colours also vary constantly. The
tower speaks in a sign language composed of light. But what is the tower at Telefonplan
saying, and who gives the architectonic form meaning?". On the website under live video you
can see a live video image of the tower and also read instructions for how to control the light
installation over the phone.

Until November 5 the video image is also projected on the façade of the Culture House in
Stockholm, as part of the exhibition "Stockholm
bygger ".