Media Architecture Institute

SPOTS media facade is a temporary projects by Realities:United. Here’s some more information provided by Generator X. (Photo by Bernd Hiepe)

“SPOTS will be a gallery for a series of curated art projects for public space. Commissioned by ad agency Café Palermo Pubblicità for HVB Immobilien AG, the installation was designed by Realities:United, a Berlin-based architecture studio with previous experience in creating large-scale light installations. Their BIX facade for Kunsthaus Graz garnered much international attention, and won them more than a few awards.

SPOTS will last for 18 months, with four commissioned works by Jim Campbell, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Carsten Nicolai and Realities:United in collaboration with John Dekron. The selection was curated by Andreas Broeckmann, director of the Transmediale festival. Visitors to Transmediale 2006 will have a chance to see all four works, as they are shown one per day in a special showing for the festival.” (via Generator X)

Some years ago Christian Möller, Joachim Sauter from ART+COM have published some interesting ideas for the EXPO in Hannover. They can be found at netzspannung.org. There’s a paper Das vierte Format: Die Fassade als mediale Haut der Architektur [PDF | 669 KB ] published in 2004.

Speaking of Classics: Bix Mediafacade at Kunsthaus Graz, Austria. Take a look at the simulation software at bix webpage, that allows you to simulate how imagery will look like on the facade.

This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion (download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).

Blinken Lights seems to be a perfect start, though it’s not a typical mediafacade – but what is the typical mediafacade by the way. I like it that much because it’s devoted to the public and invites to interaction. Unfortunately the technical principle of Blinken Lights – which is bright halogen flood light behind a diffusion layer – seems only to make sense in buildings that are empty. Check out more at Blinken Lights website. This Animation was created by Djenia Beliaikin with Blinkenpaint 2.4, a open source software by CCC.

This project has been shown at the Media Facades Exhbition Berlin 2008 and was published in the Exhibition Companion (download the Catalogue Pdf – 7 Mb).