highlike

Herman Kolgen

Eotone
With EOTONE, Kolgen and Letellier reflect on distance and weather, by staging something intangible yet powerful: the wind. Four sound and sculptural diffusers, containing elements of both the weather vane and the fog horn, make up this monumental installation that renders in movement and sound the direction and force of the wind blowing simultaneously on two continents: in Montreal and Quebec City on one side of the Atlantic, in Rennes and Nantes on the other. The wind data recorded in each city is transmitted live to the diffusers, controlling the orientation of each of the structures and orchestrating the combined chords that make up the harmonic whole perceived at the heart of the installation. By transforming weather data into sound, EOTONE offers a subtle artistic vision of the Internet of objects.

Hiroshi Matoba

Sun and Moon Room
Sun and Moon Room in the Art Museum of Nature and Human Non-Homogeneity, located in Bungotakada City, Oita, houses one of the interactive art installations designed to extend one’s physicality in contact with the nature. The concept of this work is a room where visitors can play with sunlight. As visitors walk through the room, small apertures on the ceiling automatically open and close, following their movements. The aperture system is designed to envelop the visitors’ bodies in light and to change the shape of the light cast at their feet, mimicking the waxing and waning of the moon. Visitors’ movements are detected by sensors, which trigger to open only the apertures located in the direction of the sun. The room is controlled to create an interior condition that represents the weather of the moment using a program for analyzing live data released by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Christian Babski, Stéphane Carion, Christophe Guignar & Patrick Keller

Satellite Daylight
Satellite Daylight is an interactive light installation formed by a trapeze of 24 high-voltage neon tubes tapering upwards, created by fabric | ch – a studio for architecture, interaction and research dedicated to investigating contemporary space based in Lausanne. The installation is connected to data collected in real time from online weather stations and meteorological satellite maps, which therefore translate actual global light conditions picked up by satellites orbiting the earth at the latitude of Basel into an endless loop of perceivable electrical intensity.

Maotik

Erratic Weather
Despite some world leaders skepticism, climate change is a reality and the world isn’t just warming, in some parts of the planet the weather is becoming more erratic. During the last years, our generation has started to observe the effects and consequences of this shift, witnessing violent and unexpected climate phenomenons. Erratic Weather is a digital art project aiming to represent changing atmospheric conditions into an immersive multimedia experience. During the performance, the system uses various source of weather information retrieved from an online database and processed on real time to generate a visual and a surround sound composition. During 30 minutes the audience will experience the life cycle of swirling phenomenons such typhoon, hurricane and tropical cyclone , demonstrating the devastating power of the nature and the emergency to preserve it.

DILLER + SCOFIDIO

The Blur Building (an architecture of atmosphere)
The Blur Building is a media pavilion for Swiss EXPO 2002 at the base of Lake Neuchatel in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland.From piles in the water, a tensegrity system of rectilinear struts and diagonal rods cantilevers out over the lake. Ramps and walkways weave through the tensegrity system, some of them providing a counterweight for the structure. The form is based on the work of Buckminster Fuller.The pavilion is made of filtered lake water shot as a fine mist through 13,000 fog nozzles creating an artificial cloud that measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 65 feet high. A built-in weather station controls fog output in response to shifting climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed.The public can approach Blur via a ramped bridge. The 400 foot long ramp deposits visitors at the center of the fog mass onto a large open-air platform where movement is unregulated. Visual and acoustical references are erased along the journey toward the fog leaving only an optical “white-out” and the “white-noise” of pulsing water nozzles. Prior to entering the cloud, each visitor responds to a questionnaire/character profile and receives a “braincoat” (smart raincoat). The coat is used as protection from the wet environment and storage of the personality data for communication with the cloud’s computer network. Using tracking and location technologies, each visitor’s position can be identified and their character profiles compared to any other visitor.In the Glass Box, a space surrounded by glass on six sides, visitors experience a “sense of physical suspension only heightened by an occasional opening in the fog.” As visitors pass one another, their coats compare profiles and change color indicating the degree of attraction or repulsion, much like an involuntary blush – red for affinity, green for antipathy. The system allows interaction among 400 visitors at any time.Visitors can climb another level to the Angel Bar at the summit. The final ascent resembles the sensation of flight as one pierces through the cloud layer to the open sky. Here, visitors relax, take in the view, and choose from a large selection of commercial waters, municipal waters from world capitals, and glacial waters. At night, the fog will function as a dynamic and thick video screen.