Binary Waves

source: lab-au

LAb|au| developed a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach based on different artistic, scientific and theoretic methods, examining the transformation of architecture and spatio-temporal structures in accordance to the technological progress within a practice entitled ‘MetaDeSIGN’. Metadesign [ meta = information about information ] displays the theme of space-constructs relative to information processes – architecture as a code. It concerns the transposition of inFORMational processes in n-dimensional form.
Founded in 1997 and based in Brussels, LAb[au] mainly creates interactive artworks, audiovisual performances and scenographies, for which it develops its own software and interfaces. Its four members (Manuel Abendroth, Jerome Decock, Alexandre Plennevaux and Els Vermang) also run since 2003 a digital design gallery, ‘MediaRuimte’, in the centre of Brussels.

Binary Waves:

binary waves – cybernetic urban installation

year of conceptiion: 2008

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 binary waves is constituted by a network of up to 40 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. The synchronisation of their movement allows to generate visual wave patterns where is amplitudes and frequency depends on the speed of each panel rotation. The imputes are provided by 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.

Following this conviction, 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.