Media City Bergen
Role: Concept developer, product designer.
In collaboration with Void and Anti Bergen.
Interactive sculpture commisioned by Entra for the opening of a new media complex in Bergen, Norway. The sculpture acts as a physical analogy for the prism of social media that refracts information and delivers personalized content to each user, pre-bundled in an emotional wrapping.
Informed by the geometric language of the surrounding architecture and the media complex’s visual identity, the sculpture was shaped through a generative process of intersecting planes at pseudo-random angles, inspired by naturally occurring triclinic crystalline structures. The bottom section is cast in black concrete to create a stable foundation on which to mount a precisely constructed steel structure. Along the inside LED-panels and custom made ticker-screens are assembled from a series of low profile LED-strips. The structure is clad with tinted plexiglass and semi-transparent, reflective foil that functions as a one-way mirror, effectively creating endlessly repeating patterns of content while leaving the sculpture completely opaque when “asleep”.
The installation is always online, pulling content from local news-sources, and presented within the crystal as an endless tapestry of colored text and image fragments. Different sentiments are connected to different visual cues, like colors, intensity and pace, to convey the emotional undertone of the content that is being displayed.
Technology used: Custom made LED fixtures, Depth sensing cameras, custom software built with C++.