BIX media facade

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Kunsthaus Graz at night

The BIX media facade is a matrix of 930 conventional fluorescent lamps that are integrated in the east facade of the Grazer Kunsthaus . Because the brightness of the individual lamps can be individually and continuously controlled at a frequency of 20 images per second, images, films and animations can be shown on the facade in coarse resolution.

History of origin

The concept for the BIX media facade was initiated and developed in 2001 by the Berlin architects realities: united and was completed in 2003. BIX was created as an additional element for the Kunsthaus Graz by British architects Peter Cook and Colin Fournier , when the overall planning was already well advanced. A challenge was not only the late point in time and the technical complexity of the project, but also the integration of an architectural concept by someone else's authorship into an expressive building project. After all, BIX was a new design element that covered the entire front of the architecture facing the riverwould dominate in an extreme way and reinterpret the building facade. The city of Graz as client and the architects took up the idea and at the end of 2002 gave the green light for the implementation of BIX.

aesthetics

The media installation BIX and the architecture of the Kunsthaus Graz are linked by a strong symbiotic relationship. The façade as a screen expands the Kunsthaus's area of ​​activity by technically and conceptually translating its programmatically formulated communicative requirement of a communicative external appearance. The media facade projects the content of the Kunsthaus abstractly and mediates it into the public space. During the development of BIX, central performance aspects of conventional large screens were radically dispensed with in order to achieve a number of essential advantages in return. The image resolution of the matrix is ​​extremely low. This extraordinary limitation is offset by the modular structure and enormous size of the installation, which covers the entire facade of the Kunsthaus facing the river. In addition, BIX achieves a high degree of integration between image and building, because it is not a pre-assembled projection screen, but the art house itself that emits signs and images. The impression is created as if the blue bubble creates the light signals from within. The light sources are only visible when they are active, so that the signs of light appear to float freely on the building's exterior like tattooed pigment dots.

use

Under the direction of the curators at the Kunsthaus Graz, the BIX media facade is presented with changing artistic commissioned works by artists such as Carsten Nicolai and John Dekron . The BIX installation serves as a test laboratory. With its help, the question of what architecture can achieve when it becomes a media display through media technology will be investigated. As a producer, the Kunsthaus Graz has the opportunity to develop dynamic communication between the building and the surrounding area, between content and external perception, in keeping with the architecture. The aim is to create your own form of communication from vocabulary , syntax and rhythm . With BIX, artists can demonstrate cultural and design principles that cannot be implemented on propaganda surfaces on commercially used architectural facades.

Awards

Realities: united architects have received numerous international architecture and design awards for the conception and design of the BIX media façade. Including the Golden Nail of the Art Director Club for Germany (2004), the Hans Schaefers Young Architects Prize from the Bund Deutscher Architekten Berlin (2004), and the Inspire Award from Deutsche T-Com (2005) endowed with EUR 50,000 . In addition, the BIX media facade was nominated for the Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany (2006). In 2010 the installation was added to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. BIX is represented in the MoMA collection by an early prototype of “a pixel”, which realities: united used in the planning process as a study object to investigate the lighting effect and controllability of the installation.

Web links

Coordinates: 47 ° 4 ′ 15.6 ″  N , 15 ° 26 ′ 3.7 ″  E