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Science and Technology in Cultural Context

Expanding Cities DAW 2010

Last update: August 13, 2014, at 01:39 PM

EXPANDING CITIES

From Digtal Archeology to Future Cities

Location: Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts → more info
Acting Curator: Arthur Clay

Exhibition Times: Friday, 2 July to Friday 16 July, 2010

About the EXPANDING CITIES Exhibition
This exhibition project has been spawned out of observing the recent phenomena of how digital technologies have opened completely new forms of approaches to reconstructing the past, modeling the present, designing the future using desktop virtual reality systems and at the same time observing how artists have increased their search for creating tactile and immersive media spaces for the consumption of electronic artworks. The presentation concept behind project adopts contemporary artists' search for new mediated spaces and combines this with recent tendencies in architecture and archaeology, which have “gone digital” and that now use computer modelling, programming, simulation and imaging to create both virtual forms and physical structures.

Participating Artists & Scientists

Philipp Bönhof (CHE)
Enrico Costanza (CHE)
Jürg Gutknecht (CHE)
Stefan Müller Arisona (CHE)
Sofia Pescarin (ITA)
Christian Schneider (CHE)
Simon Schubiger (CHE)
Art Clay (USA/CHE)

Artworks

Procedural City Procedural Inc. (CHE) The Procedural City installation employs Procedural Inc's „CityEngine“ technology and allows the visitor to create a personalised procedurally modelled city. The digital world on view is a qualitative representation of geographical, statistical and topological data, such as terrain, population densities, and even street network. The representation can be combined with biometrical information from a visitor in order to create a unique, personal representation to each visitor. Thanks to its generative nature, the installation is extremely content rich, can be interactively explored and makes the invisible visible. A predecessor of this work is currently exhibited at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria.

Scanning Chang'an Philipp Bönhof (CHE) Sofia Pescarin (The Virtual Heritage Lab) '''Art Clay (CHE) The Scanning Xian project focuses on archaeology and cultural heritage via Desktop Virtual Reality applications. The project demonstrates the preservation of archaeological sites by creating virtual reproductions, which are useful for analysis, studies, and public education. The Computer Systems Institute of ETH Zurich has created an attractive application of in the realms of wearable computing and virtual reality, in order to enable the viewer to experience the tombs as if walking in them. Intuitive head movements enable a natural impression of a panorama view. The system represents a prototypical virtual museum, which future cases could guaranty the digital conservation of important archaeological sites in great danger.

Projected Realities Christian Schneider (CHE) ‘Projected Realities’ is a spatial augmented reality installation consisting of a projected scene on a physically modeled surface, which is mapped onto the physical model and reacts to its topological attributes.The installation represents a series of works, which explore the possibilities of spatial augmented reality in architecture. Virtual 3D geometries, simulations, and animations can be projected onto real objects. This leads to many possibilities for exploration, because the modification of color and texture can determine the impression of a surface and the perception of it can be explored. By merging virtual and physical space not only can scenarios and spatial illusions can be shown, but also invisible elements such as temperature, air current, structural tension, CO2 diffusion can be easily revealed.

The Book of Stamps Art Clay (CHE) & Enrico Costanza (ITL) The « Book of Stamps » is a travel guide between sonic landscapes from cities to urban cultures. The sheets of the book provide a “recording surface” and the ink stamps with their various patterns provide the ability to place sounds into the book. Together they act as an interactive tangible interface for a variety of time based musical tasks that form a collaborative composition by its users. There are two sets of ink stamps: The stamps that look like natural things like trees, bushes or stone paths belong to the “Country Sounds” category; Those that look like buildings belong to the “City Sounds” category.By stamping a book page with a combination from both categories, a soundscape is created that will either tend to sound like a city, a country or an urban sonic mix of both. In this manner, sonic spaces are created for each of the pages and when the user turns the pages to other already stamped pages, it lends him or her the impression that they are actually “travelling” between places sonically.

Copyright @ ETH Zürich

Page last modified on August 13, 2014, at 01:39 PM