CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

MEDIAARCHITECTURE CONFERENCE SEPT 11-12th 2007

CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS INNOVATION LONDON

The Impact of Large Scale Integrated Displays on Architecture and Urbanism.

MediaArchitecture is one of the first opportunities to discuss an important new intersection of architecture, technology, media and art.

The conference creates a new discourse among the latest theoretical and practical approaches and, while also addressing current developments in display lighting systems, its central themes are the cultural and theoretical implications of intelligent building surfaces in the urban environment. Technology has allowed the creation of very large display surfaces which can carry moving imagery, but which are integrated with the architecture and no longer flat and rectangular. These displays can be bright enough for daylight use, potentially creating a paradigm shift in architecture, but they are also heavy energy consumers at a time of increasing environmental concern and their prominence at night has raised charges of pollution. New reflective display components and advanced materials offer important alternatives, so consideration of future developments is essential.

By reviewing outstanding projects and presenting the views of key architectural theorists, media activists, planners, advertisers and artists, MediaArchitecture will provide the first in-depth consideration of this rapidly expanding field.

The conference has received generous support from experts in the field, from The FGGin Austria, from companies such as Elementlabs Inc. and from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts.

Tuesday, 11th of September

10.00-12.00 Internal meeting: speakers and panelhosts 10.00-12.00 Registration, refreshments 13.30 - 14.00 Official Introduction/Welcome 14.00 - 16.15 New materials/New technologies

Host: Prof. Oliver Schuerer (A), TU Vienna Prof. Dr.Ludger Hovestadt (A), ETH Zurich: Architecture and Flusser’s Technical Images Dr. Gernot Tscherteu (A), mediafacade.net - a team approach to develop standardised media facade components. Thomas Schwed (A), Architektur Consult: Mediafacades as integral part of architecture Rogier van der Heide (NL), Arup: Hyperreality in the urban context

16.45 - 19.00 Urban Media Host: Mirjam Struppek (GER), Interactionfield Prof. Malcolm McCullough (US), University of Michigan Prof. Joachim Sauter (GER), Art+Com: New media in public space Andrew Shoben (UK), Greyworld: Transforming the City into an Urban Playground Michael Batz (GER), Hamburg Art Ensemble: Scenographies of a City

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Wednesday, 12th of September

9.30 - 13.00 Image/Architecture 11-11.30 break Host: Kathrin Kur (GER, UK), flunk

Ruari Glynn: An approach to Interactive Architecture

Jan Edler(GER), Realities United: Contemporary Architecture Tim Pritlove(GER ) CCC / Blinken Lights Els Vermang (BE): LA[bau]: MetaDeSIGN

Alexander Stublic(GER ): Dynamic Architecture 14.00-16.30 Architectural Theory Host: Prof. Peter Cornwell (UK), blip Prof. Mark Dorrian (UK), University of Edinburgh: Google Earth: Terrestrial Mediatization Prof. Bart Lootsma (A, NL), University of Innsbruck: Total Immersion Dr. David Cunningham (UK), University of Westminster: Advertising Architecture

Grace Quiroga (US), University of Washington: Ceci tuera cela 17.00 - 18.00 Final session/discussion with Prof. Peter Cornwell, Mirjam Struppek

9.30 - 18.00 Poster session (corridor)

M. Hank Haeusler Thomas Rausch/Bernhard Breinbauer

Panel 1: New Technologies and New Materials / Oliver Schürer

Media Architecture has been driven by technology - certainly by the refinement of LED components originally used in LED advertising billboards; but also by development of sustainable computing and network systems able to operate extensive façade data systems over the entire life-cycle, and within the maintenance constraints demanded by architects and building owners. conference panel addresses evolution of new building materials bearing ultra-high brightness LEDs and light-steering optics, but it also covers significant issues posed by image generation and diagnostics. Lessons from existing lighting control and building management system installations will be evaluated and sustainable and fault-tolerant computer systems considered. Equally important, the real demands placed on cabling systems and configuration software will be presented in the context of survivability, maintenance and the need for installation and support within an expanded construction industry.

Panel 2: Media Urbanism / Mirjam Struppek

The emergence of ubiquitous LED media creates new challenges for the urban space. While experience with LED lighting and moving imagery billboards during the last ten years has given rise to concerns of light pollution and regulation in some cities to prevent ingress of television-style advertising into the public space, the evolution of media architecture presents more complex issues. LED replacement of basic building lighting will produce huge energy savings during the next ten years and substitution of traditional neon brand marks leads to similar reductions in maintenance costs. More-over, new LED lighting of unprecedented brightness allows whole building structures, rather than signage alone, to reflect corporate branding. These technologies, as much as display elements built into structural elements, shaders and cladding will transform the urban environment as much as electric light did during the last century. Unlike con-ventional lighting, however, LED media is readily networked; able to carry information - cultural as well as corporate - it creates a new medium in the public space.

Panel 3: Image/Architecture / Kathrin Kur

There is a fundamental relationship between public imagery and architecture which dates from the earliest built structures, and at one level new display technologies sim-ply layer upon this history. However, at other levels new media are forging a paradigm shift in this relationship. Firstly, media façades already combine aspects of lighting and graphics in formats determined by the architecture, and differ fundamentally and not just in resolution from the rectilinear image. Secondly, moving imagery has increas-

PANEL DESCRIPTIONS

ingly become interactive and emergent - synthesised from or driven by information from the environment, whether it be from within the building or from the outside world, through channels such as the internet - displacing narrative clips originating in other media. Such notions of the building/environment as author promote lighting and image as significant elements of the visual perception of the three dimensional structure of the architecture.

The relationshivp between media architecture and fine art is less clear, however. Constraints of display resolution – often a fraction of a conventional video image - and complicated access from mobile devices reduce the potential scope of media art works. It is possible that imagery for architectural displays will become the preserve of a new class of content makers more closely related to the fields of lighting and event design than that of art.

Panel 4 - Media Architecture / Peter Cornwell

Media façades precipitate a shift in the relationship between the building and its cladding. Commentators such as Venturi have written about this evolution for many years, but now that practical and economic technologies have become available, both theoretical and implementation issues must be addressed. From the dialogue between geometrical structure and image: information and ornament; to the changing function of architectural surface, this panel will bring together theorists of international standing in one of the first in-depth considerations of media architecture. The panel will investigate expected future developments – the nature of architectural media systems in the near and distant future.

Michael BatzHamburg Art Ensemble

Presentation Title: Scenographies of a City

Contemporary Lighting Master Plans define the underlying conditions for lighting public spaces: intelligent harmonization of all light sources on the urban stage in order to give the greatest flexibility while at the same time consuming as little energy as pos-sible. A new perception-oriented approach to lighting planning for architecture andurban areas is now becoming significant, in contrast to earlier technical-functional methods. Accentuated by the paradigm shift towards the “reflecting city” from the tra-ditional stone and transluzenten (glass) cities, responsibilities for transforming thetownscape and the city identity have now received political meaning.

Profile: Batz is an author, theatre-maker and light artist. 1970 - 1976 study German-istik, history, philosophy, history of art in Marburg/Lahn. Since 1974 he has directed numerous theatre productions and arts festivals. 1990 - 1994 dramaturgy KAMPNA-GEL international culture factory Hamburg. Program concepts. Art exhibitions. Perfor-mance/art actions. Since 1994 he has been co-ordinator of Theatres in the Memory City and Port Culture Days and is a longstanding member of the board of ‘AliveCity’. 2003 Alexander tin prize of the city Hamburg.

Prof. Peter Cornwell (UK)

Profile: Peter Cornwell has worked with computer image generation in both art and commercial applications since studying painting and then computing science. He worked on early computer graphics for television with The Moving Picture Company and on computer aided design and robotic manufacturing systems as manager of European research and development for Texas Instruments. Later he formed Division, Inc., a virtual reality (VR) company in California, which developed commercial 3D visualisation products for architecture, pharmaceutical and aerospace companies and became a public company. More recently he has been professor of both Computing Science and Media Art; director of the Visual Theory Group, Imperial College, London, and teaching at the Royal College and Academy of Arts and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He has been director of the Institute for Visual Media, ZKM, Germany and has exhibited in major spaces such as the RA and ICA, London; Kiasma, Helsinki; ICC, Tokyo and ZKM, Germany. He is a member of artist group Flunk and with his de-sign company blip he has undertaken LED projects such as CocaCola and Samsung in central London. http://www.cornwell.com http://www.flunk.com

Prof. Malcolm McCullough (US) University of Michigan

What is an environmental history of urban inscriptions? How does pervasive computing shift that concern? From graffiti to state proclamations to the contentions of branding, and from petroglyphs to banners to lit facades, the architecture of the city has been layered with lasting messages. While some kinds of inscriptions have always been admired and others regarded as nuisance, and while prominent inscriptions must have held some greater power in a less information-saturated world, today’s developments accelerate the pace, scale, and responsiveness of fixed communications to the point where these issues transform. Environmental history asks not only how humanity has patterned its settlements, but also how those have influenced entire biomes, and trans-formed notions of nature and artifice. This talk attempts to put current developments in urban signage into such larger cultural perspective.

Dr. David Cunningham (UK) University of Westminster

Presentation Title: Advertising Architecture

Abstract: Coined by Adolf Behne, the concept of ‘advertising architecture’ (Reklam-erarchitektur) was first applied to the department store buildings of the architect Eric Mendelsohn. Looking back to the period in which Mendelsohn was working, in his pa-per David Cunningham will also seek to explore the contemporary resonances of such a concept in the context of emergent discourses surrounding the relationship betweenarchitecture and new forms of media more generally. A concept of advertising archi-tecture in this way raises questions about both the commodity status of architecture today, and the changing relationships of form to function, the building-object to the urban.

Profile: David Cunningham is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster in London, and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. He is co-editor of the books Adorno and Literature (2006) and Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century (2005), and a former guest editor of a special issue of The Journal of Architecture on the post-war avant-garde. Other work has appeared in publications such asArchitectural Design, New Formations and SubStance. He is currently working on a book on the metropolis.

Dr Mark Dorrian (UK)University of Edinburgh

Presentation Title: Google Earth: Terrestrial Mediatization

Abstract: The presentation will reflect on the rise of Google Earth, analyzing it in the context of Google’s holistic ideology. It will pay close attention to the programme’s in-terface, examining how its solicits the user and the kind of global imaginary that results. The implications of the mediatization of the terrestrial surface via satellite imagery will be considered, and the consequent mass migration of the consumer’s eye into space. The hybrid ‘mashups’ of text, diagram, and photographic image pioneered by Google increasingly become an actual practice projected and constructed at large scale upon sites on the ground and addressed to a mass market that is now ‘in the sky’.

Profile: Mark Dorrian is Reader in Architecture and Director of the Master of Architec-ture programme at the University of Edinburgh, and is Co-Director of Metis, an atelier for art, architecture and urbanism. He has recently written on architecture and clouds (Radical Philosophy, 144), and is currently working on the cultural and political history of the aerial view. Metis’ recent project ‘Northroom’ can be seen at www.northerncity.co.uk/

Jan Edler *1970 and Tim Edler *1965 // (GER) realities:united

Presentation Title: Contemporary Architecture Jan Edler studied architecture at the Technische Universität Aachen and at London’s Bartlett School of Architecture. Tim Edler studied computer science and architecture at Technische Universität Berlin. The brothers work as architects, designer and artists. In 2000 they founded their office „realities:united“ in Berlin. All their projects deal with issues of space, information, message and communication. Their creative achievements have been prized with a number of architecture and design awards, such as the Hans Schäfer Preis from the Association of German Architects (BDA), the „Inspire!Award“ by Deutsche Telekom or the „Goldene Nagel“ (Golden Nail) which is the highest award given by the Art Directors Club, and has been shown at numerous exhbitions in Europe including the Venice Biannual for Architecture (2002 & 2006), the Vitra Design Museum and the new Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. Their most recognised projects to date are BIX [1], a light- and media facade at Kunsthaus Graz in 2003 that has hallmarked their international breakthrough, and SPOTS [2], a urban media instal-lation at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

Aside from their project-related work both of them have taught at various institutions such as the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Technische Universität Berlin or the Pasadena Art Center College in Los Angeles. Since 2005 Tim Edler holds a visiting professorship at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen. www.bix.at www.spots-berlin.de

Ruari Glynn (UK)Bartlett School of Architecture

Presentation Title: An approach to Interactive Architecture

I believe that the current popular understanding within architectural discourse on interactivity is misguided, following a reactive model of human/master controls architecture/slave promoted by the software and multimedia industries. I will argue that unless architects and designers start to understand the full potential of interactivesystems over reactive systems, our built environment will suffer from a form of homogenization and limiting of opportunities that we see evident in the software design. To do this, I will present the work of a number of architects who pioneered the design of what I consider truely interactive environments in the 50’s and 60’s, and who I believe, had a more useful conceptual understanding of interaction than the one which has been diluted in contemporary culture. Following this I will suggest that recent developments in mobile robotics, AI and cognitive science, hint at relatively simple ways in which architects and designers can build adaptive systems that extend the potential of Media-Architecture beyond the human/master controls architecture/slave approach most common today.

Profile: Ruairi Glynn is an architect and researcher. He is the editor of ‘Interactive Archi-tecture dot Org’, an online resource dedicated to contemporary interactive art installa-tions and architecture and is a guest critic at the Architectural Association, London, and the Institute of Digital Art and Technology, Plymouth. A graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, he is currently continuing his research there, as member of the ‘Interactive Architecture Workshop’. His most recent work focuses on building adaptive, and kinetic responsive environments that though gestural performances, enter inhab-itants and objects into “dance” like relationships. He is a multi-award winning artist, most recently presented with the Hamilton Award for Design Excellence at the Bartlett School of Architecture and a ‘European Top Talent Award for Digital Media’ at Europrix TTA 05 organized by the European Commission for Information Society and Media’.

Alex Haw (UK)Architectural Association

is an architect and videomaker heading the experimental collaborative practice Defrost. He did time at Princeton, the Bartlettt, Diller+Scofidio, Richard Rogers and Nicholas Grimshaw, and played the lead psycho in Chris Nolan’s first feature film. His interests include time-based architecture and media, optical space, environmental effects, machinic processes and landscape.

Prof. L. Hovestadt (CH)ETH Zürich, Dept. of Architecture, Comptuer Aided Architectural Design

Presentation Title: Architecture and Flusser’s Technical Images

Abstract: Against the background of the information technologies architecture has gained a new reality. No longer are objects or processes the constituting elements of a building. Now they are described as technical networks of communicating nodes, which balance themselves in contrived patterns. Different concrete examples refer to a way towards a post digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities.

Profile: Ludger Hovestadt has been full professor for architecture and CAAD since July 1, 2000. He was born in 1960 in Gelsenkirchen (D) and studied architecture at the RWTH Aachen (D) and the HfG in Vienna (A) under Prof. Holzbauer. His research has always been interdisciplinary: architecture, computer science, mechanical engineer-ing, robotics and cognitive psychology. Professor Hovestadt’s current research centres on adaptation of technological developments made in other areas of expertise into the building industry, which by nature, acts on a long-term basis. His research projects are therefore not technological experiments e.g. Virtual Reality, but look for a historical anchor and show a concrete use for current building practice.

Rogier van der Heide (NL)ARUP LIGHTING

Presentation Title: Hyperreality in the urban context

Rogier van der Heide is a Director with Arup and Global Leader of Arup Lighting. He has been responsible for innovative, creative and well executed projects around the world in the field of exterior lighting, feature lighting, dynamic lighting and day lighting. Rogiers project list includes works by architects such as UN Studio, Renzo Piano, ZahaHadid and MVRDV. Rogier will be the design leader for the lighting design on this proj-ect, overseeing the lighting team in Amsterdam. Besides over ten other design prizes, Rogier has received the two most prestigious awards in the lighting design industry: the Lighting Designer of the Year Award and the IALD Radiance Award.

Kathrin Kur (UK/GER)FLUNK

is an artist and designer working in electronic media and photography. She studied philosophy, visual arts and critical theory at FU Berlin, Brighton University and London University. Her interests are in computer assisted vision, remote imaging and film tech-nology. From experience in film special effects, as well as production of animation for flagship LED installations at London company Streetvision, she has developed a hybrid

practice and a body of work that includes video, computed and photographic works. Emerging interactive display technology and computer imagery generation techniques have produced opportunities of dynamic montage and image synthesis. www.kathrinkur.comwww.flunk.com

Prof. Bart Lootsma (A/NL)University of Innsbruck

Presentation Title: Total Immersion

Abstract: Bright lights in big cities have fascinated architects from the start. Erich Men-delsohn published several photographs of New York’s Broadway in ‘Amerika, Bilderbu-ch eines Architekten’ in 1928 and was completely flabbergasted by them, in particular by a multiple exposure he had made by night that even enhanced the spectacle. The illuminated advertising signs in New York were in his view ‘one of the elements that help prevent the functional city from turning rigid’. So, even if architects are usually control freaks and very aware that they could not define the content of what would be shown, it was exactly the wild, uncontrollable nature of the phenomenon that appealed to them. It could bring their buildings and cities alive. Architects and artists together should design city centres in which these spectacles could take place. Profile: Bart Lootsma (Amsterdam, 1957) is a historian, critic and curator in the fields of architecture, design and the visual arts. He is a Professor for Architectural Theory at the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck. Before, he was Head of Scientific Research at the ETH Zurich, Studio Basel; a visiting Professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Nurnberg; a visiting Professor for Architectural History and Theory at the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and thesis tutor at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He has been editor of ao. Forum, de Architect, ARCHIS and GAM and guest curator of ArchiLab 2004 in Orleans. Together with Dich Rijken he published the book ‘Media and Architecture’. His other books include ‘SuperDutch’ and ‘ArchiLab 2004 The Naked City’.

Tim Pritlove

Abstract: On September 11, 2001, Project Blinkenlights surprised the public with a low-tech, interactive light installation at the Haus des Lehrers building at Alexanderplatz, the heart of East Berlin. Using 144 windows of the building, the group set up a huge computer screen as a platform for the public to use interactive gameplay and on-de-mand private movie playback. The installation was quickly followed by an ever bigger installation at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris in 2002. The presentation focuses on the dynamics the project managed to establish among the people using it and the main ideas of the underlying concepts of interaction and audience integration.

Profile: Tim Pritlove, aged 39, is looking back at a 25 year career as a hacker, program-mer, system administrator, trainer, event manager, blogger and podcaster. He started writing e-mails in 1988. Tim is a long time member of the Chaos Computer Club and has been organizing the Club’s events for over a decade including the annual Chaos Communication Congress, the quadrennial Chaos Communication Camp, the monthly Chaosradio radio show and has been project coordinator of Project Blinkenlights since 2001.

Prof. Kari Jormakka/ Speaker: Grace Quiroga (US/A)University of Washington

Presentation Title: Ceci tuera cela

Abstract: When in 1832 Victor Hugo announced that the printed book had killed the edi-fice, he did not mean that architects would no longer create interesting designs but that architecture had lost its function as the great work of humanity: Architecture expresses nought, not even the souvenir of the art of the past. Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other arts because it is abandoned by human thought, it has nothing but skins and bones left.Today, even the skin and bones of architecture are turning into dust. While corpora-tions and cities continue to construct exceptional buildings for promotional purposes, the means of attracting attention are increasingly dependent on spectacular feats of engineering, both in the case of very tall skyscrapers and buildings clad with animated media screens. Economic and functional arguments clearly speak against that which has been the domain and expertise of architects: the shaping of monumental buildings and public space. The Uniqa Tower in Vienna is a tombstone marking this most recent death of architecture ? but it is a passing away that should not leave us bereaved.

Grace Quiroga studied architecture at the University of Michigan and the Vienna University of Technology. In addition to practicing in Seattle, she is currently working on a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Washington. She is the author of the forth-coming book O M A * R E M * A B C, which uses the form of a surrealist dictionary to scrutinize the ideas proposed by Rem Koolhaas.

Alexander Stublic (GER)Presentation Title: dynamic architecture

Abstract: Alexander Stublic will present four architecturally related projects in different technical environments always focusing on correlations of space by extending and transforming architectural structures.

Media artists Holger Mader, Alexander Stublic and the architect Heike Wiermann use the area of conflict of reality and simulation to investigate mechanisms of perception in

public spaces.They use time-bound media such as light, video and sound.

“twists and turns”, special artistic video displayed on the Uniqa tower, Vienna, since 2006, “reprojected” on the seven screens in Munich, 2006/07, “inner city waltz”, on SPOTS-Installation, Berlin, 2007 and “façade”, Iceland, planned for 2008.

The artists group Mader Stublic Wiermann works together since 2000 and is based in Berlin. Holger Mader and Alexander Stublic studied media art at the Karlsruhe Univer-sity of Arts and Design and majored in media theory, media art and philosophy. Heike Wiermann studied at the Department of Architecture at the University of Karlsruhe, at the UDK Berlin and the HFG Karlsruhe.Over the past 3 years, the group exhibited in the ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Kunsthalle Mannheim and Museum Ritter, realized several pieces in public space and took part in international festivals like the Steirischer Herbst, Filmfestival Seoul, viper, transmediale.

Andrew Shoben (UK)GreyworldPresentation Title: Transforming the City into an Urban Playground

In 1993 Andrew Shoben founded Greyworld in Paris. They have exhibited their work around the world, with permanent installations in 12 countries. They are currently work-ing on a monument beside Tate Modern to be unveiled in September and have recently been asked to take part in Channel 4’s landmark Big Art commission.

In his talk Andrew will explore ways of transforming the urban realm into a public playground. To allow some form of self-expression, through small interventions in the urban surround, in areas of the city that people see everyday but normally exclude and ignore. He will show examples of past work, in particular The Source (2004) their 32m kinetic sculpture which opens the London market every morning at the London Stock Exchange.

Thomas Schwed (A)Architektur Consult

Thomas Schwed is head of office and senior designer at the international operating company Architektur Consult. He graduated at the technical university of Vienna and works in Vienna and Frankfurt. He has been responsible for major designs such as theT-Mobile Center in Vienna and the European Central Bank building in Frankfurt.

Prof. Joachim Sauter (GER)ART+COM

Presentation Title: New Media in Public Space

Abstract: During the last years, “New” Media have advanced more and more from pri-vate and semi-public institutional spaces into public city space. The reasons for this are manifold. The necessary technologies have become cheaper, more easily manageable and more stable; users of city space are media literate, and the designers and decision makers are better educated and skilled.Since the end of the 80s, ART+COM has been working on the practical design-oriented and artistic research of such systems and their realisation. The vertical in city space, i.e. the façade, is in focus here, just as well as the horizontal as the location of media installations.In the design of media façades, we are directed by two principles stemming from “fa-çade’s” etymological root ‘facies”, Latin for ‘face’. We are designing the skin of a face, not a mask or make-up. This means that the media have to be an integral part of the architecture, not something added as an obvious later thought. The second principle is the face’s mimics and its expression. The narrative on the façade is thus expressive of the building, its architectural stance and its interior. The façade is a membrane from inside to outside and from outside to inside.

Profile: Joachim Sauter has been using computers both as a tool and as a medium from the early stages of his work. Fueled by this interest, he founded ART+COM in 1988 together with other artist, designers, scientists and technicians. Their goal was to practically research this new upcoming medium in the realm of art and design.

In the course of his work he was invited to participate on many exhibitions. Beside oth-ers he showed his work at ‘Ars Electronica’ Linz, ‘Centre Pompidou’ Paris, ‘Stejdilik Mu-seum’ Amsterdam, ‘Museum for Contemporary Art’ Sidney, ‘Deichtorhallen Hamburg’ , ‘Venice Biennial’, ‘ICC’ Tokyo, ‘Getty Center’ Los Angeles, ‘ZKM’ Karlsruhe.

He received several awards like the ‘Ars Electronica Interactive Award’, the ‘Los Angeles Interactive Media Award’, the ‘Prix Pixel INA’, the ‘British Academy for Film and Television Interactive Award’, the ‘German Design Award’ and the ‘Swiss Design Award’.Since 1991 he is full professor for “New Media Art and Design” at the ‘University of the Arts’ Berlin and since 2001 adjunct professor at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Mirjam Struppek (GER) Interactionfield

Profile: Mirjam Struppek works as urbanist, researcher and consultant in Berlin. She has lectured and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, public sphere and its transformation and acquisition through new media. Since 2002 she is developing the online-information-platform interactionfield about the relation of

interaction, new media and public space. In this context she organises the monthly lec-ture and discussion evening „Urban Media Salon“. Currently she works on her concept of “Urban Screens” after developing the first international conference Urban Screens 05 about “the potential of outdoor screens for urban society”. In 2003 she worked as Assistant in a gallery for still and motion pictures in Berlin. She is holding a degree with distinction in Urban- and Environmental Planning from University of Kaiserslautern and spent in 1999 two research semester at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University, Japan.www.interactionfield.dewww.urbanscreens.org

James Thrower (UK)

is a digital media artist, information designer and researcher working in both the com-mercial and media art fields. After postgraduate study at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he went on to develop a collaborative and multidisciplinary practice, which utilises a wide range of media. He is a member of the International Centre of Fine Art Research at the University of London and works at Central Saint Martins London. His creative and production work with BLIP has focused on developing content strategies to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving network of daylight compatible LED billboards and hybrid architectural media facades, working with clients such as Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola and Samsung.

Dr. Gernot Tscherteu (A)mediafacde.net

Presentation title: mediafacade.net -a team approach to develop standardised media facade components.

Abstract: The group’s main innovations arise from its simultaneous reformulation of all of the architectural, structural and electronic components required for next-generation media facades so that display and built structure merge functionally, technically and aesthetically. mediafacade.net is a research group comprising design consultancies and major architectural and manufacturing companies as well as research institutions.

Profile: Gernot Tscherteu studied political science at the University of Vienna. He wrote his dissertation about the influence of digital media on the development and communi-cation of knowledge at the Institute for Scientific Research and Theory with supervisor Prof. Helga Nowotny and Prof. Ulrike Felt. Since 1991 he has worked as a software interface designer and interactivity researcher for internet systems. He has managed several industrial collabortion projects at the Austrian Academy of Science, the Acad-emy of Applied Arts, EDVG, Sysis AG, ZKM Karlsruhe, MQ Wien, Caritas Austria and Belleville CH and made numerous publications. In 1999 he founded the architectural and design practice planhaus in collaboration with DI Claudia Pöllabauer.Between 2002 and 2005 he worked as coordinator for the LED project „Leuchtathletik“ at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Els Vermang (BE)LAb[au]

Presentation title: MetaDeSIGN

The recent Dexia Tower project in Brussels, shows LAb[au]’s approach towards ‘media-architecture’ as being a spatial and temporal programming of light which can create an interactive relationship in between the user, the building and the city, entirely transform-ing the conception of media facade as generic content displays, towards new vectors to think architecture, art and public space.

In the recent project ‘Touch’ the design aesthetics are directly deduced from abstract art such as Mondriaans ‘elementarism’ and Kandinsky’s ‘point and line to plane’ as the skyscrapers architecture, where points = pixels = windows, lines and diagonals = levels and edges of the building and surfaces = facades, thus focusing on the relationalqualities expressed by an elementary language, and exploiting interactivity not as being a control system but rather as a catalyst for these relational / representational parame-ters. For the permanent enlightening, the project ‘Who’s afraid of Red, Green and Blue’ draws reference to the philosophy of Barnett Newman, researching a symbolicvalue in abstract art by using colour and time.

Els Vermang’s ( b. 1981 in Leuven, Belgium; lives and works in Brussels ) style is programmatic and parameter-based, and combines space with art and music. During her 4th year of architecture she crosses LAb[au] and starts working there as a MetaDe-signer. One year later, in 2004, she completes architecture. Full-grown crewmember ofLAb[au] and Benjamin of the international electronic arts-scene, her key-qualifications are conception, design, info graphics and curatorships. With LAb[au] she created the MediaRuimte-gallery, the ‘Liquid Space’ series and catalogue, ‘Point and line to plane,computed in seconds’, ‘12m4s’, ‘Man in e.Space’, ‘Pixflow’, ‘Touch’, ‘Who’s afraid of Red, Green and Blue’. http://www.lab-au.com

PLASA is the lead professional body for businesses that supply technologies and ser-vices to the entertainment, live event, leisure and architectural industries. The Asso-ciation provides information and advisory services to its growing worldwide member-ship, leads the development of qualifications for the sector, runs lobbying campaigns to protect its members’ interests and is dedicated to improving the business practices adopted by the industry.

An increasingly multi-faceted organisation, PLASA also runs successful media and events divisions responsible for the industry-leading magazines Lighting&Sound Inter-national and Lighting&Sound America and the main European exhibition for the sector, the PLASA Show.

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