Ars Electronica FutureLab
unitM is a work of media art and design that was commissioned for the newly-built computer training center at the Institute for Economic Development (WIFI) of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce in Linz, Upper Austria. The planning and execution of the project were carried out in close cooperation with the head architects and the users of the building.
unitM represents an interactive, networked media art project as the interface between Menschen (people), Media and Machines, a communicative interplay of light and color, language and movement, that takes into account the building's purpose as a place to impart knowledge and expertise in a field of great promise for the future. Its open, self-modifying character enables unitM to gather data from its environment, react to it, and establish contact with it.
A network of analog and digital sensors collects information on events transpiring within the building, the activities of its users, data from its immediate surroundings and actions taken by Internet visitors. A central computer network organizes and evaluates the incoming data. Its logical-abstract structure constructed on the basis of rules and patterns of behavior enables unitM to interpret the data and to form an impression of its environment. The interaction proceeds indirectly via sensors and values that are provided by the building's central control system, or directly via the activities and actions of visitors.
The realization of unitM is an outgrowth of the idea of taking human perception into consideration as an architectural component in the conception of a building. The result is a prototype for an interactive building. Now that computerization has enabled interactivity to penetrate into seemingly all aspects of everyday life, it is high time to apply this principle-at least in the form of a prototype-to the architecture of public buildings as well. Moreover, this project addresses sociopolitically relevant aspects of a high-tech environment such as privacy and surveillance.
Modern buildings are managed by a central control system (CCS) that is unnoticed by the building's users. Here, this system is augmented by additional sensors, so that the analysis of the data provided by the CCS permits conclusions to be drawn about the state of the building and the activities of its users. This project is designed to shed light on control systems technology in order to make these processes comprehensible by visitors.
In addition, general framework conditions like the time of day and the season of the year as well as the active and passive behavior of Internet users are blended into this process. The analysis is based on the data that is gathered: values, frequencies and the span between extreme readings.
Matrix Configuration of unitM
unitM recognizes activity patterns of the building and its users (such as "ordered," "chaotic," "requiring immediate action" or "on hold") and assigns corresponding reaction patterns-"system states"-to them. The status findings interpreted in this way are visualized on output elements and thus made available as information to visitors and to the building's surrounding environment. unitM translates the virtual impression of the building's ambience that emerges thereby into a play of light, color, text and movement, which is disseminated via electronic news tickers, light installations, digital read-outs and websites.
People determine the daily rhythm of unitM. The arrival of the first visitor activates the system. Every event fills the system's memory banks with energy. After closing time, impressions and information are processed only in a very general way, the system begins to run down, its light rods lose their luminosity, its news tickers' lines of crawling text come to a halt and fade out.
unitM operates in a variety of different ranges of effectiveness-from the system itself, the building and its users, and extending ultimately to the whole neighborhood surrounding the building.
The luminous force of the columns of light protruding from the building integrates the adjacent part of town into the installation. Information on the status within the building is transmitted to its surroundings via color and rhythm. A comparison of the characteristics of the information during business hours and times of rest (that is, workdays versus weekends) reveals to observers the correlation between activity and the play of light.
Besides imparting information on the immediate state of affairs, the intensity of the play of light also reflects the energy level of the system. unitM derives its energy from user activity. The registered data are saved and accumulated throughout the day until the energy storage system discharges during the evening. Here, interaction takes place analogously to the range of effectiveness in relatively long time intervals.
In the building's interior-the next smaller range of effectiveness-the flow of information proceeds in considerably more concrete fashion, whereby direct communication between visitors and unitM gives rise to an additional level of interaction. Acoustic and visual sensors in the ceiling of the connecting walkway monitor the corridor's current level of usage and whether loud, hectic noise or pleasant peace and quiet presently prevails. The light and color situation in this corridor is then analyzed and the results fed into the data flow.
The stairway railing is a contact sensor linked to the computer matrix and delivers low-level information about visitors.
Aside from these indirect interactions, there are also direct access and communication levels available to all persons present in the building. The language-based components of the installation clearly illustrate this form of communication. At several stations, visitors can playfully experiment with language, with the interaction proceeding in a way that is direct and easy to comprehend. Users can, for example, communicate with the system via spoken words processed by a language recognition system. Text messages crawl down a news ticker mounted vertically on the terminal's podium and seem to flow into the floor, then spread across the labyrinth of the information displays in the lobby, and are finally reemitted in the form of energy through the columns of light. The texts are also saved to the system's knowledge bank.
Thanks to the system's language recognition capabilities, verbal messages can be fed into the news ticker network through a microphone built into one of the user terminals-the typical translation errors included.
Another channel of direct interaction proceeds via a biofeedback station. Here, users can have their pulse, skin resistance and body temperature measured and have these personal values displayed on an oversized light installation. For a few moments, the individual user's pulse determines the rhythm of the entire system.
The light elements integrated into the in-house café's bar can be individually and directly accessed and their colors can be mixed. User access always takes priority over the system's interpretation of the current stream of data. Amidst this ubiquitous array of computer and sensor technology, users are always able to determine their own level of participation, and thus become proactive subjects instead of just passive objects.
On the computer level-that is, at the core of unitM-interaction proceeds in direct and concrete fashion; the range of effectiveness is limited to the system itself. Here, data, including that derived from the sensors monitoring current conditions, are automatically fed in numerical form to digital displays. The values indicate, for instance, how often certain doors have been opened and closed. This is how system-immanent processes are visualized; for visitors, however, what matters here is not the capability of comprehending the meaning of the figures, but rather the symbolic reflection of the processes.
Depending upon the type of information being processed, data is saved in different storage modes-a process that might be compared to short-term and long-term memory. The short-term memory of unitM stores information on interactions with users and the news that is selected daily from the Internet and fed on a regular basis into the news ticker network.
The long-term memory of unitM is a "knowledge bank" designed along the lines of a database. This knowledge bank currently contains over 300 documents that have been painstakingly selected from the WorldWideWeb. The stored texts represent a cross-section of the cultural history of the past millennia. If no direct interactions with users are currently in progress, these texts will also be fed into the news ticker network at certain prescribed times.
The complete texts can be accessed at the website. This interface enables anyone to establish contact with unitM-which is to say, with the building. There exists, for example, the possibility of feeding a particular text into the news ticker network; as feedback, the user receives a depiction of the news ticker's current content. Events within the building are documented and made available to users. And visitors can also obtain background information here on the complex way in which unitM functions.
Credits
Project Execution: Ars Electronica FutureLab
Concept: Gerfried Stocker, Dietmar Offenhuber, Joachim Smetschka
Artistic Directors: Karin Pressl, Dietmar Offenhuber
Technical Directors: Volker Christian, Roland Marschner
Design: Dietmar Offenhuber
Software Development: Volker Christian, Robert Abt, Gerald Kogler
Architecture: Franz Kneidinger, Peter Minixhofer, Dietmar Offenhuber
Screen Design: Helmut Höllerl, Martin Bruner, Sebastian Polin, Jürgen Hagler, Stefan Eibelwimmer
Technical Support: Wolfgang Beer, Joris Gruber, Phillip Krammer, Martin Pichlmair, Robert Praxmarer, Gunther Schmidl, Werner Stadler
Knowledge Bank Editor: Martina Angerer
Special thanks to Walter Burgstaller, Felix Messner and all the other WIFI staffers who helped out on this project.
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