Fête des Lumières 2008, Guillotière’s Terraces, Lyon, France

Binary Waves is an urban and cybernetic installation based on the measuring of 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 rotating and luminous panels of 3 meter-high
and 60 centimetres wide, forming 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.
Their rotation is controlled by microprocessors, allowing to determine precisely the rotation speed and angle,
while their networking allows to synchronise the movement of the panels. The microprocessors are
connected to infrared sensors, capturing the movement of passer-by’s, 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.

The kinetic principle driving the installation is derived from wave propagation in water, which, because of the
proximity with the canal, is one of the project’s major contextual parameters. This analogy between wave
propagation and the programming of the panel’s rotation behaviour, is founded in the characterisation of the
urban context as a fluid state constituted of micro events. As such the installation is based on the concept of
rhythm inscribing single urban events into a collective pattern addressing the principle of flows.

Light reinforces the kinetic principle of the panels. The kinetic and illumination vocabulary is based on the
parameter of time (duration = repercussion of a signal over the panels), speed (force of impulse) and the
sense of rotation. These parametric settings of light in correspondence to the urban flows designate the
intensity of light from flux to lux.
Furthermore, each captured signal is related to a sound reinforcing the perception of the circulation
frequency and leading to a soundscape. 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.

Binary Waves by Lab au

LAb|au| collective

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.

LAb[au] showed its work at Emocao Art.ficial (Sao Paolo, 2008), Club / Transmediale (Berlin, 2007), TENT. /
Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2006), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, several times), Sonar (Barcelona,
2004), New Museaum (New York, 2003), Nabi Art Center (Seoul, 2003), ICA (London, 2002), Bauhaus
(Dessau, several times), Louvre (Paris, 2000), Ars Elektronica (Linz, 1999), …. among many others.

No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.