Turnstile
Bauhaus University Weimar, 2016
On the front wall of the Schadowstrasse underground station, an LED wall displays a generative video. In front of the wall, a light shaft extends to the surface of the plaza where a video camera is set up. The camera continuously films passing pedestrians on the plaza and streams the feed to a specially developed generative software application (coded by Felix Bonowski) which derives proposed geometries for structures based on the movement patterns of the pedestrians. These interpretations of the real-time video generate new geometries for the location and propose axes and parcels. Two elevators, to the left and right of the large video image, lead from the plaza to the rail platform. On the platform, the geometric structures can be heard as a sound interpretation (by Yunchul Kim). At the centre of the artistic intervention is the video image and its artistic concept.
The software is implemented to execute the following program:
1. Select a location (origin)
2. Determine the movement axes of people and traffic
3. Look to see if these axes are at angles to one another, which when mirrored and rotated can form a polygon, the sides of which all extend outward equally
4. Draw this polygon to approximate the natural geometry of the location
5. Look to see if, starting from this, the intrinsic geometries of the location can form a surface structure, (tessellation) that periodically repeats the original geometries
6. Determine whether and how, in the aerial image of the location, the areas fit together in the revealed geometry of the place
7. Enhance existing structures by developing their geometries
8. Connect existing structures into the logic of the original geometry
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Authors
Project Partner
Cultural counsil of Düsseldorf, Germany