impressum

In a showcase of international Urban Screen initiatives, Our Friends Are Electric introduces the concept of urban screens to the Melbourne audience in anticipation for the next Urban Screens Conference 3rd-8th October 2008.

From the subways of Paris to electronic billboards in cities such as Toronto, Berlin and Amsterdam, Our Friends Are Electric is a series of projects created specifically for public screens throughout the world. The series will include a range of video art programs in addition to individual artist initiatives created from collective, worldwide contributions.

This project, curated by Kerrie-Dee Johns and Mirjam Struppek, is presented by Federation Square and the International Urban Screens Association - a network of international collaborators ,officially launched during Urban Screens Melbourne 08.

Myths and Potentials of Media Architectures and Urban Screens
Berlin, October / November 2008

The MEDIAFACADE FESTIVAL BERLIN 2008 builds on the successful international Mediaarchitecture Conference held in London in 2007. This festival will explore the integration of social media and images into facade structures as communicative element and its effect on urban space. It will be the beginning of a long-term urban screens network with the aim to coordinate a creative program for architectural digital surfaces in Berlin.

Manchester Urban Screens provided an interesting set of 3 differently positioned Urban Screens for public Art screenings for 4 days, October 11.-14. The temporary LED Screen at Urbis, Cathedral Gardens served as creative backdrop for peoples engagement with the screenings like the project "Flag Metamorphoses" and "Circulez Y’A Rien A Voir". "D.I.Y Ballroom" inspired amateur dancers to take over the floor spontaneously as feathers and bow ties were handed out.
"Man with a Movie Camera" is continuously inviting people to send in their own interpretations of the Vertov classic, which are juxtaposed with scenes from the original and was first shown at Manchester Urban Sreens.
"A Wall is a Screen" took the viewer onto a citytour with its mobile projection equipment, stopping at previously unnoticed locations for the screening of localised footage.


More images from Michelle on Flickr

The Virtual Museum Zuidas and SKOR finally launched the urban screen at Zuidas, Amsterdam on October 5, 2007: CASZUIDAS - MOVING IMAGES IN PUBLIC SPACE is starting with highlights of the programme along with a selection of TheOneMinuteVideos and portraits of people in the Zuidas made by students of the Sandberg Institute will be shown. Every day from 6 a.m. to midnight, CASZuidas will show work from (inter)nationally known artists and promising young talent, curated by Jan Schuijren.

I'm currently involved as cocurator in this exciting event



On 11th and 12th September Media Architecture 2007 will take place at Central Saint Martins Innovation in central London. Organised by Media Architecture Group in Vienna, the conference will bring together international speakers from the architecture, planning and media communities for the first time to address the increasing integration of new display technologies for building construction. The huge impact of this development for building design and the urban environment will be explored from both theoretical and practical implementation perspectives by leaders in the field. The conference takes place at the same and is co-organised with PLASA, the international lighting exhibition at Earls Court, London.
Speakers & curators include:
Joachim Sauter, Bart Lootsma, Ludger Hovestadt, Realities United, Andrew Shoben, Kari Jormakka, David Cunningham, Mark Dorrian, Hermann Eisenköck, Patricia Austin, Tim Pritlove, Peter Cornwell, Kathrin Kur, Andreas Rumpfhuber, Oliver Schürer, Mirjam Struppek, Jim Thrower, Gernot Tscherteu

7.2.-10.2. 2007 The Graffiti Research Lab takes conrol 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). See also their projection bomb and the BORF riot bike in action.


link by Tijmen Schep

"NYCs True Grafiti Problem" is a new project by the Anti-Advertising Agency with Graffiti Research Lab criticising light and visual pollution by hacking NYs video billboards on the subwayentrance with cardboard. Watch the movie and see also Ji Lee’s Abstractor TV instructions for turning video billboards into a piece of Art.


(still from the movie)

Between December and January a new interactive urban project called ‘ touch’ by LAb[au] transformed the dexia Tower in Brussels. Visitors could interact via a specific multi-touch screen with 4500 rgb light on a 145m high skyscraper to choose their color and to generate graphics which are displayed in real-time on the tower. Visitors also could request to snap a picture which they can sent as an electronic greeting card from the station on the bottom of the tower.


Artists: LAb[au] - ® Dexia + LAb[au]
Architects: Philippe Samyn & P., M & J.M. Jaspers - J. Eyers & P.
Lightning engineer: Barbara Hediger

A callenge against the consumer society, "aiming for a complete change of culture": By a margin 45 to 1 city officials in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have voted to ban all outdoor advertising. From Jan. 1 2007 there will be released as part of the 'clean city' law, against billboards, neon signs and electronic panels.

In the opening sequence of the new movie Children of Men (2006) the glass facades of shopping malls in London in 2027 are coverd with translucend moving images, showing memories of smiling children. Buses are covered with digital adverisement, Head-Up-Displays in ordinary cars. The world has fallen into anarchy due to an infertility defect in the population. No children. No hope. No future. But lots of Screens...

The National Library of Belarus in Minsk, is covered by glass panels. During the day all 24 sides sparkle. "Architects Victor Kramarenko and Michael Vinogradov, (... ) wanted to preserve and convey this vision at night. (... ) A total of 4646 color-changing LED fixtures were installed all around the building, effectively creating a monitor with 25x25 meter sides and 62 meters in diameter." (article and image by LEDs Magazine)

14th Dec. was the opening of the new 114m2 screen at the Rembrandt square in Amsterdam. "Mediamatic will show the square what cultural content the city has to offer. The screen will be inaugurated with a live VJ set by Micha Klein"...

Rembrandtscreen in scaffolding

Nov. 6th 2006 to Mar. 7th 2007
The Digital Hub will run a series of outdoor projections from their premises in the Dublin 8. The projections will run for the entire weekend Friday 17:00 - Monday 08:30 and each weekend a new piece will be shown.
- This is an open ended call. There is no deadline for submissions.
- All work of any subject and discipline will be considered.
- sound will not be played on the street.
For further details please contact Elaine
e. exhibit@thedigitalhub.com

Daniel Michelis is currently experimenting with audience participation and reactions to the installation "Magical Mirrors", he is blogging about his observations. "Magical Mirrors" invites the observer in the street to play in front of and with these mirrors at the SAP Facade in Berlin Mitte. Very challenging, it's a tough time for interactions in public space, it got very cold in Berlin these days.


Lots of images on flickr

During the World Soccer Games in summer a WM-Special ran on the installation:

Colour by numbers is a 72 meters high light installation at Telefonplan tower in Stockholm, running from October 23 until January 7. By calling a number, +46 (70) 57 57 807 one can control the colours in the windows of the tower by mixing red, green and blue light with the phone. A webcam observes the whole play. (Thanks for the link Christian)


(via we-make-money-not-art)

The Habitat Hotel is a working scale model of a hotel in Barcelona, by Cloud 9 Architecture . The 'energy mesh' wrapped around it has individual nodes that collect the sun's energy during the day and at night gives off a specific color according to the amount of energy collected. The model's mesh consists of 500 tri-color LEDs controlled by a PIC microprocessor. (via pixelsumo)

Achim Wollscheid's projects redlighthaze and intersite work with a mesh of LED lights covering the facade, recting to the sonic cityscape.



Natalie Bosko's light screens as well cover facades with a reactive LED light net:

Jonah saw this funny comment on a programable sign in New York. The whole sentence did not fit in, so the beginning of the moral advice "Use of Fake" is missing and thus creating a pretty artistic statement ...

Cell Phone Disco is a playful experimental installation made out of flashing cells. They basically consist of one or more LEDs, battery and a sensor that detects electromagnetic (EM) radiation transmitted by an active mobile phone. When the sensor detects EM waves it sets off the LEDs to flash for a couple of seconds. In general the flashing cells are enclosed in a plastic casing on a strap and sold as a fashion accessory for a mobile phone. Fuer die Deutschsprachigen ein Bericht im Spiegel.


thanks Auke!

More and more media facades are beeing realised using techniques that allow the building's occupants to see out and daylight to enter.
At nighttime the whole first floor of the Raiffeisen Bank in Hollabrunn near Vienna becomes a digital LED screen running the bank's branding and promotions, or any other effect or animation. A light sensor turns the system on and off automatically, according to light levels. LEDs magazine describes the detailed construction and technique.

Timo Arnall came across this facade installation in the centre of Taipei, Taiwan and posted it on Flickr. He sais he really liked that the images stayed the same for very long: they weren't flashing or calling attention. The tree and the face image stayed the same for a whole day....
Does anybody know who the architect is?

Michelle Kasprzak writes about her experience curating Transmedia :29:59, the year-long programme of time-based art shown on a video billboard in Dundas Square in Toronto. 1 year, every month 2 artists shown in the 29th and 59th minute of every hour.

From 10. Sept. to 19. Nov. at the 10th Venice Biennial for Architecture, ART+COM and architects Hoyer, Schindele, Hirschmueller und Partner will present the Reactive Gap House.



This architectural and media concept study meets the challenge of narrow building gaps overcoming the lighting problem by using illuminated ceilings – LEDs behind opaque glass. Connected to a sensory system, the ceilings react to movement below them. Inhabitants can also control the lighting in accordance to their moods.

Imagine a dormant virtual world with four seasons projected individually every week for the public to play with. The 3D inhabitants of the virtual world will come to life and populate the world as soon as they are prompted by the proximity of a Bluetooth signal from a mobile phone.... (Maria N. Stukoff)



See also Marias thoughts on her blog about an Open Mobile Broadcasting Channel

Lumalive textiles make it possible to create fabrics that carry dynamic images. Will we soon carry around on jackets and backpacks our selfmade videos or favourites from youtube to share them with the urban public?
See documentation at youtube by Philips

Solar Obelisk is teaching people about rewneable resources in an interesting media installation intergrating light and sound using Solar power. Integrating an analogue bench supports the possibility for encounter and exchange in combination with the interactivity occuring through turning the solar panels on the obelique towards the sun and
experimenting with the effect of this on the integrated information displays.

The sustainable revolution is proceeding:

quietrevolution display tourbines combine wind energy with LED displays:
"QR is available in a model capable of creating a visual display that is part artwork, part renewable energy device, part communications medium. LEDs embedded in each of its three S-shaped blades fire in sequence as the blades rotate, painting a video screen that appears to hang in the air. This full colour and motion image is clearly visible day and night."


Thanks for the hint Oliver Ionescu!

The Victory Media Network, a large-scale digital art gallery in Dallas, Texas, announces a new opportunity for filmmakers, digital artists and visual storytellers to show their work in a unique, world-class outdoor venue. Launching in November of this year, they will display publicly-submitted artwork, in conjunction with other media, on 11 LED Barco O-lite screens. Eight of these screens are on horizontally moving tracks an offer a myrid of motion possibilites.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana inaugurated a Billboard, made of of 25 separate red light panels located in the windowpanes of the 5th floor to spread information or "propaganda" in the eye of Cubans. U.S. diplomats use it for example to flash messages to Cuban protesters.
In reaction Castro ordered to erect a "screen" of flags to cover it and personally visitsed the construction site. People speak of the new Bilboard war....



more images from fluctuat.net

virtual dschungle 5 - Media facades

Location: Architekturzentrum Wien - Podium
Presentation: Wednesday, Apr. 05, 2006, 07:00 pm
http://www.azw.at/event.php?event_id=565
Tickets: Free entry!

The harbingers of the media city are cropping up everywhere: projected images the size of an entire façade, huge screens on roof tops and culture buildings used as flickering display surfaces. Developments in the area of display technologies have produced new possibilities for hybrid architecture. The theme of media facades in architecture is not simply the next fashion trend, but represents a step in technological development that will have a lasting impact. This trend will affect the city – with or without architects' collaboration. Therefore the important thing is to assume social responsibility and to integrate the new technologies in building in a culturally ambitious way. For an Austrian architecture scene that likes to experiment the potential of such developments is a highly topical question....

On my last trip I came across this information touch-screen at Stansted Airport where you can search in a huge job database right when you arrive in the UK. In gives a 24 hour telephone link to the national Jobcentre Plus website and the airport jobcentre. A paper by Markella Boudioni analyses the different use of information touch-screen kiosks

Outdoor movies in charming settings has been popular in Berlin for a few years, like infront of the Charlottenburger castle or on the famous "museum island". In Sidney at the Royal Botanic Gardens they go show noe the Flickerfest, international short-film festival outdoors with a "killer harbour view"...


(thanksGeert for the link)

Exuberant Christmas decorations in remote onefamily house areas are nothing new. Now a house owner started to discover comuter controlled systems for coreograhed, synchronised christmas light annimations, turning the house into a kind of moving screen. Is it really true? here the background... "So that the Williams' neighbors aren't disturbed by constant noise, viewers driving by the house are informed by signs to tune in to a signal broadcast over a low-power FM radio station to hear the musical accompaniment." Mr. Williams has posted instructions for others to follow. and finally made it into a TV commercial.


(thanks Juergen for the hint)

We are not far from images floating infront of us like minority report showed us ... Newsweek writes about 3d "in-your-face projections" filling up a volume of space. Firms are working on different methods to realise 3d impressions.
The Heliodisplay is not really 3d but it is a device which projects real-time streaming video images into thin air and can be also interactive, allowing a finger to move images around.
... but not yet for outdoor space.
FogScreen develops interactive "walk through screens" using fog as projection surface.

Club 11 at the Post CS building, Amsterdam, where we held our conference, continues to used its large screens covering the windows for a participatory screening event. The online community was asked to submitt jpgs of their personal panorama view and was encouraged to integrated name, location and company logo. One method how to make people participate.



Here a submission example :

Displax is working on interactive windows based on rear projections and finger tracking. One step closer to an urban space filled with moving images asking for your engagement with the virtual....


(thanks Florian for this link at Future Feeder)

aether architectures new Induction house version4: a programmable space installation made of analogue pixels, each using solar power and radio communication to sense the presence of people. Various scenarios are looking at playful interaction with this screen on the floor.

TV-B-Gone®, a universal remote control that is designed not only to turn TVs on and off, but also to enhance your life. How you enhance your life is totally up to you....

Human moving billboards in Sydney: the digitalised version of people carying advertisement posters. "The 25- to 31-year-olds market, in Australia especially, are not at home watching television, they're at pubs watching television and people, so I decided to put televisions on people." Here some comments....
And another blogpost about human ad space and an article about advertising and the human billboard.

Peter Hall writes about the Phenomenon of "stadium stunts ", of choreographing crowds to transform them into displays for the eyes of aerial and stadium cameras. These follow a long history of utilising crowds of people to form figurative graphics. Here an Interview with Joe Kivett a producer of these "card sunts".



But nobody is better than the North Koreans with their "mass games". One hundred thousand people dancing infront of a huge screen made up of children turning colored pages of books. Here some videos of the 2005 celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the ruling communist Korean Workers Party, a report by Luis Ramirez and a cnn insight script. A state of mind is a documentary about the games of 2002.



(Thanks Angelo for the hint)

Culturetv pdcasts about SPOTS at Potsdamer Platz 10, Berlin. For 18 months, the main facade of this office building host this light and media art installation designed by realities:united.

"Search technology comes to the camera phone"
This Article beautifully explains some new marketing technique called "mobile visual search", how to make people interact with the products they see or buy more intensively via mobilephone. Sending a picture of the add to a special database will in return give you promotional perk or more information.
- getting free downloadable songs from your dayly milk bottel
- getting film trailers and nearest theatre locations from movie billboards, buy tickets
- getting soccer games from a bottle of soft drink
- getting beautytips and sweepstake entry for a trip to Paris from shampoo bottles
- of course it is used for security issues...

There will be an incresed connection of lage scale static screens and the personal mobile mini screen... see also the post about sema codes

(Thanks Rob for the link)

The fight for the largest screen in Europe goes on...
Press release: The traditional letters on top of the landmark building of the Axel Springer publishing house have been replaced with an LED screen banner, 4 meters high and over 50 meters wide. (see also the news from Sept. 05)

Erkki Huhtamo (Screenologist) writes about the history of the screen and shows fascinating historic images!

"There are "Big Screens" and "Small Screens". Some are flat, some fat, attached to a box. Some are like the sun - active, radiating "life" of their own - while others are like the moon, passive, reflecting light projected at them. There are screens observed from a distance, and others touched and interacted with, held in one's hand. How to formulate a definition that would embrace them all? Does it even make sense to ask such a question?..."

Storyboard will provide an opportunity for members of the public to post messages to a mobile Variable Message Sign using a mobile phone. The sign will be located on Hayes Island, adjacent to the Old Library and will be active between 10am and 11pm on 28th, 29th and 30th October. Storyboard by Stefhan Caddick is part of Cardiff's inaugural Festival of Creative Technology (28-30 Oct. 05). Following the Festival, the work will move to Gallery 39 for an exhibition in December The VMS sign was provided by Leaderboard sports.

I am collecting established screens networks. Annything to add, plese send me a note!

LED Screens Network, Lithuania (since 2002)

CityVisions Outdoor Video Network, Russia (since 2003)

Urban Display Network, at New Yorks Subway enrances (since 2004)

Network of LED Billboards, Mexico (since 2004)

City Channel, Austria (since 2004)

StreeT.V, Tel Aviv, Israel (2005?)

LED screen network in Lisbon, Portugal, established for the Board of Tourism

Another interesting post by the we-make-money-not-art blog:
A projector/camera system shows images of raindrops hitting the ground and making ripples. If people enter the area their palms are tracked and the projector shoots advertisement onto their hands. "The 'rain' could guide customers to specific stores....The system could also be used to show motion pictures at amusement parks, letting people in long queues enjoy animations or movies on their palms as they move ahead...."


Sale...

An interesting comparison I found on Informationlab:
Pleinmuseum representing the classical approach "where the drama stays staged in front of (the audience) without mobilising them into the exploration of the 'unfolded' screen", represented here by Aether architecture and their projects.

Timescope by ART+COM is a telescope that is overlaying the real city you look at with images of the history or future of the site.



This is based on the idea of augmented reality. Here a mobile personal screensystem, the nomad display, that directly projects into your eye, overlaying data on your view. Of course used for military pupose...



Yet the system semacodes are a much easier way to bring localised information quickly on your personal mobilephone screen. It is simply an optical barcode connected to a URL internet address. "Using the Semacode Reader technology, a user can scan a semacode tag and then with a single click connect to the web page or other internet resource right on their portable camera phone." It is used for example in urban exporation games.

Virtual commercial 3d invasion of public space?!
Matthew's comment: "We could see boxes in shop windows with the 3D image of the product projected onto the pavement outside so we couldn't miss it. I'm sure advertisers could come up with a way to use the sensor system for some simple interaction to keep the potential customer's attention as well."



Thanks Pieter for the hint!

Live from the stifo@sandberg conference:
Lambert Kamps is just showing his project of rooftiles that are made of transparent polyester with integrated LEDs. They make it possible to display messsages, logos, animations on your roof.

Scarlet P. the anti-war activist has put up more than 2,000 cardboard signs on his own in California. " When you put a sign on the freeway people will read it until someone takes it down. Depending on its size, content and placement it can be seen by hundreds of thousands of people." The freeways are more and more equiped with digital bilboards but they are only open for commercial used. Since 9/11 and the beginning of the War in Iraq, freeway blogging has exploded in the US as reclaiming a space for free speech where you can also reach a big audience. (see the interview with him)
Online he has put guidelines and a picture blog...



Here my own image from recently driving to LA: