dietmar offenhuber » futurelab

The Language of Networks (Symposium)

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 12:33:17 +0000

The Language of Networks is a symposium / exhibition I co-curated for Ars Electronica 2004. The lineup was broad and interdisciplinary, including visualization developers, media artists, mathematicians and social scientists. The festival website is offline, since ars electronica restructured their archive, but the pdf program can still be downloaded here. A nice blogpost about the symposium can be found here.

living room

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2003 02:55:47 +0000

A permanent installation for a Upper Austrian high school building, conceptualized and implemented as part of the ars electronica futurelab. In the school-building, four different theatrical stages with different scales and possibilities were constructed, from a small table for stop motion animation to a room-size green-box space. The images taken on these stages were collected in a web-repository, from which the students could assemble short multi-screen stop motion animations shown on the central space of the school.

The project page at ars electronica with full credit list.

URBIS – Imagining the City

admin — Sun, 02 Jun 2002 03:17:47 +0000

Developed with the ars electronica futurelab in a larger collaboration with Landesign, Inc. / London.

Projection-based interface for the visualization of the cultural content in a dynamic three-dimensional environment for the “Urbis” museum project in Manchester, England. The modular information platform on which the installation is based invites visitors to create virtual cities through interaction with a flow of media. The results are three-dimensional, dynamic skylines that are projected onto a panorama screen. The individual cities (City of Pleasures, Emotions, Imaginations and Senses) are embedded within scenarios derived from crystalline, organic and urban structures, as well as modeled on outer space.

The project was nominated for BAFTA award, and I received for my contribution the 82nd Art Directors Club, Annual Awards, Silver Award (New Media)

I have only screenshots of the 3d world, but Dan Hill, who created the content for the exhibit (wonderful work!!!), has some photos of the installation on his blog,

Unit-M

admin — Mon, 10 Apr 2000 02:15:47 +0000

An early media architecture example conceptualized and implemented as part of the ars electronica futurelab. For the new building of an Austrian education institution we conceived a display concept based on the idea of “functional transparency”, the building communicating its processes to its users, visitors and the city.

The project consists of three elements. Most visible from the city, the light columns with individually addressable RGB light elements, communicates global environmental parameters such as time of the day. A second display element, the text floor, was associated with the domain of the users, who could exchange messages (which would, for example, only be able to pass through a door if it was open). Finally, small displays in the vertical columns would show the status of the system, such as the times individual doors have opened on that day.

The user input happens over four input terminals where users could input speech, text or biometric measures such as their pulse, which would cause the light columns to blink in sync.

The project was awarded with the Joseph Binder Award 2001, the old project page with full credit list can be found here

nomads

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 1999 14:31:22 +0000

A game-engine modification as an audiovisual environment. Amused by the erratically busy movement of non-player characters in a computer game, we re-contextualized the purpose of these bots as narrators and sound objects: ranting about experiences in pizza restaurants or making announcements in an infinite loop.
We also developed a 1m² platform as a full-body interface, allowing visitors to move through the environment by balancing on the platform.

“Interwoven spaces, diverse acoustic domains and the transmutation of physical laws constitute challenges to visitors’ faculties of perception. Orientational aids include visual points of reference as well as acoustic guidance systems and even fictional beings whose paths visitors can track. Visitors balances on a sensor-equipped platform that moves through the artificial environment; the acoustic events that surround them are synchronized to the platform’s movements. NOMADS is also an extraordinary example of the graphic performance of a conventional PC.” - from the ars electronica website

Credits: Models: Dietmar Offenhuber, Sounds: Markus Decker

Exhibited in Ars Electronica Center 1999

bike – a roadmovie

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 1998 13:15:47 +0000

A Roadmovie

Bike emerged from an improvisation I did in late 1998. Creating one situation, which works as a loop sequence, I tried to tell the story just by switching the perspective – from first person view to the very distant spectator who is able to survey the whole situation.
The Soundtrack was constructed by Markus Decker in Mathematica and layered with short analog noise impacts.

The short was shown at Siggraph 99, New York Animation Festival, Darklight Filmfestival Dublin, Art Futura 99, Ars Electronica 99, Diagonale 99, Seoul Cyber Film Festival

Animation : Dietmar Offenhuber
Sound: Markus Decker

AEC Elevator Floor

admin — Tue, 10 Sep 1996 16:39:10 +0000

This was my first project for Ars Electronica, started in 1995 – an animation on the floor of the elevator, synchronized with its movement. For historical interest, the Animation was modeled in Alias Animator Studio on a Silicon Graphics Onyx 2 and played back in frame mode on DPS Perception video hardware, rendered in 100 fps to accommodate for the elevator’s acceleration. Thanks to Gerda Palmetshofer for help with the textures.