“Aarhus by Light” an Experiment in Urban Space

The Concert Hall in Martin Professional’s hometown of Aarhus, Denmark, known locally as Musikhuset, is the setting for an avant-garde social, cultural and technological experiment called “Aarhus by Light.”

A digital world
“Aarhus by Light” is an installation in the form of an interactive media facade in which guests and passersby can partake. Some 180 m2 of Martin Professional LC Series™ LED panels mounted on the inside of the Hall’s glass façade work with camera-tracking sensors mounted on outdoor light poles to capture the movements of passersby and transforms them to colorful digital silhouettes on the facade. The graphics are generated by pedestrians walking on colored carpet at three different locations.

The digital world is a mini-version of Aarhus, complete with an ever changing skyline of the city’s most notable buildings. Apart from the silhouettes, the facade is inhabited by small, luminous creatures that attempt to make contact with the newly arrived forms.

The encounter between citizens and a cultural landmark is unique. Lured to explore the interactive potential of the façade, passersby find themselves as players in a shared experience, and a temporary element of the architecture itself.

Experimental collaboration
“Aarhus by Light” is an experiment to gain insights into the workings of media facades. Its stated purpose is to “develop interactive media facades as part of inner and outer architectural surfaces.” A specific aim is to “develop new concepts for interactive media facades in the domains of communications, branding, company and product presentation, entertainment, and digital arts.”

The experiment in social and new media interaction combines architecture, sound and display technology, and animation and content and is a collaboration between the University of Aarhus, Wall of Pixels, The Animation Workshop, Martin Professional and Concert Hall Aarhus.

“We see the project as an excellent opportunity to cooperate with our local scientific and educational institutions,” says Lars Dall, Vice President of Martin Professional’s Visual Solutions segment. “It provides the chance to exchange knowledge and generates new ideas which can increase our competitive position.”

LC Series
Martin’s LC Series is a semi-transparent, modular system of LED panels for displaying video and images. Extremely flexible, they have many uses in both the entertainment and architectural industries. “In this installation it was important to maintain the transparency that the glass building provides while still creating a façade with graphics, pictures and video,” Lars comments.

“The installation is also exciting in that it breaks from the traditional rectangular screen form, that large television-like square that you often see with LED walls. Here, the panels are presented in multi-form and become part of the architecture.”

“Aarhus by Light” runs from February 7th until the end of March. It is part of the research project Media Facades, funded by The Regional ICT Corridor Program. It is also part of the research center Digital Urban Living, funded by the Danish National Strategic Research Foundation’s KINO program and the municipality of Aarhus.

For more information on “Aarhus by Light” visit www.aarhusbylight.dk/index-english.html