Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Open Lab (2019)
- 1.1 Overloading/Overloaded: Touch Me Softly

Open Lab (2019)

Overloading/Overloaded: Touch Me Softly

This project is an individual part of Neigungsgruppe Medienfassade.

Project Description

The Ars Electronica Center itself is being expanded to include touch-sensitive sensors which will be transformed into an interactive installation. The sensor-point placed on the façade by the entrance of the building invites visitors to touch, caress, scratch, strike and hit the building. Touch, in turn, creates wave animations that spread across the building. Overloading the sensors (eg. hard knocking) causes the whole façade to crash.

Background

The room surrounding us has become a part of our daily life. It's so closed to us, that we nearly don’t sense its existence. But if we open this "box" in another way, we will see, a building is not only a big complex of concrete, pipes, electricity and functional areas, but also living beings.
During the testing we did at Ars Electronica Center in Linz, we saw a big ecosystem between the main building and the glass façade. Pigeons can fly easily reaching each corner of the narrow space, where we could hardly walk through. Except pigeons and, of course, insects, even a tree has broken the limit of nature and artefact conquering the space.
Therefore I suppose the AEC media façade as a sensitive body. It takes time to trigger it on, but at the same time it's so fragile, that can be turned down by one punch. An interactive interface between human and a building can be the very first step to explore and reflect on our relationship to the things we created.