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Moving Types · Media façade

Messages only came together on the bridge.

An interactive LED façade for the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz. Anyone could send it a text message. The letters drifted across the building as points of light and became readable for a moment, in one place.

Explore the case
Role
Concept, technical planning and set-up in a team of three · adapted for three more venues
Timeframe
2011–2014 · in Mainz running until 2024
Context
HfG study project for the z zg and the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz
Status
Built at four venues · around 3,000 messages in the first six months

The glass bridge in Mainz, 2012 · Still from our documentary film

01 / Starting point

Could a text message become part of a building?

In October 2011 the Gutenberg-Museum Mainz opened ‘Moving Types – Letters in Motion’, an exhibition on a century of animated type. Its first concept, from 2010, imagined text messages projected onto the glass bridge between the museum’s two buildings, so the exhibition would reach the square outside.

In the summer semester of 2011 our interaction design group took on the façade and the entrance. It was a fourth-semester studio at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, supervised by Ralf Dringenberg with Anja Stöffler, who curated the exhibition for the z zg, the centre for time-based design of HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd and Hochschule Mainz.

In Mainz I developed the concept, the technical planning and the set-up with my fellow students Luise Pescheck and Adrian Abele, together with Ralf Dringenberg and Anja Stöffler. For the three venues that followed I adapted the façade to each building with Ralf Dringenberg and Anja Stöffler. Nikolaus Völzow wrote the software; Felix Urban composed the sound.

The exhibition and its app are a case study of their own →

“Messages, information, poems or banal greetings can be sent by text message to a large projection (projector or LED screen).”

Exhibition concept, 5 October 2010, translated from German. · Original material

02 / Site

We started with the square, not the screen.

Before choosing any technology we mapped the place: the paths people take across the Liebfrauenplatz, where they stop and from where the bridge above the museum’s passage can be seen. Six steps led from the first concept to a façade that ran day and night.

  1. The idea

    Text messages on the glass bridge, projected or on an LED screen.

  2. Site analysis

    Paths across the square, sight lines and the places where people stop.

  3. No projection

    Daylight, distance and running day and night ruled it out.

  4. Vertical LED bars

    X-Wall bars by Richter: five full-colour LEDs per 21 cm bar, set closer together towards the bridge.

  5. Built to fit

    Mounting angles calculated, brackets laser-cut from spring steel at the HfG.

  6. Opening

    The façade runs around the clock.

From a projection plan to light bars: six steps, after the presentations, plans and workshop files of 2010–2011. · Illustration
Site plan of the Liebfrauenplatz with the museum buildings, the bridge and the main walking routes shaded in yellow Detail of the site plan with a sight cone from the square towards the bridge A crossed-out projector icon
From our presentations, summer 2011: the routes across the square, the sight lines towards the bridge and the slide that ended the projection. · Original material

03 / Encoding

The text was everywhere, but readable in one place.

A ticker would have turned the museum into a news board. Instead, each message is broken into points of light and spread over the whole façade, so most of the building shows a drifting pattern. Towards the bridge the bars move closer together. On the bridge they form a dense grid, and the points line up into letters, readable for a moment before they fall apart again. The same idea ran through the exhibition inside, where every film waited behind a code.

The Gutenberg-Museum at dusk: single points of light scattered across the whole façade, and letters glowing on the glass bridge in the middle
Mainz at dusk, November 2011: points of light all over the façade, letters only on the bridge. · Original material · Photo: Martina Pipprich

Up to 24 letters, digits and simple punctuation.

Points spread over the building turn into text only where the bars are dense. Bars per section after the façade plan of 5 August 2011; the row shift that scrambles the letters is simplified. · Reconstruction
Elevation of the museum façade with evenly scattered light points and the letters Ag on the bridge Elevation of the museum façade with light points concentrated towards the bridge
Old and new arrangement: first the points were scattered evenly over the façade, then set closer together towards the bridge, so pattern and text flow into each other. Slides, summer 2011. · Original material
The new arrangement as an animation test, 8 August 2011: the points drift from right to left and only line up into letters at the bridge. · Original material

04 / Score

Seven rows of light worked like a stave.

The letters are seven points high, so the façade has seven rows of light, like the lines of a stave. We proposed reading them as music. Felix Urban turned that into a sound concept: every row has its own tone, with three variants for the three LED colours, 21 tones in all. When letters reach the end of the façade, they play a short melody over a quiet ground of paper and typing sounds under the bridge.

The message from the façade above, read as a score. Sound is not played here. · Concept visualisation
Slide with a musical stave and treble clef next to the façade elevation, an arrow pointing from the façade to the stave
From façade to stave: the idea on a slide from summer 2011. · Original material

The façade also reacted to the people beneath it.

Whoever stood on the bridge distorted the letters. Whoever walked through the passage below changed their colour. Sound, distortion and colour change all ran in daily operation.

Four photos taken from the same spot show the colours the letters took on the bridge. Walking through the passage below was one way to change them.

Colour change, tested on the white model in 2011. · Original material
The passage changes colour: violet, red, white. · Original material
The museum square at night, the word Mainz in white on the bridge The same view, letters in violet on the bridge The same view, the bridge and the passage below glowing pink The same view, letters in red on the bridge
One spot, November 2011: white, violet, pink and red on the bridge. · Original material · Photo: Martina Pipprich

05 / Build

We rehearsed the façade on a white model.

Before anything was mounted, we tested the animations on a white model of the façade: a concept video in May, projections onto the model in June. Then came the building work. We calculated the mounting angles, laser-cut brackets for the bars from spring steel in the HfG workshop and planned the cabling. The façade opened with the exhibition on 20 October 2011 and ran around the clock.

Concept video, May 2011: points drift over the model’s grid and gather into type. Full version on Vimeo ↗. · Original material
Model test, 29 June 2011: projected onto the model, the points become ‘Moving Types’ at the bridge. · Original material
Plan of the glass bridge as a grid of LED bars forming the letters A and g Elevation of the whole museum façade with the positions of all LED bars marked in pink, the bridge with the letters Ag in the middle
The bridge on 4 August 2011, 280 bars in one dense grid for reading, and the last façade plan before the opening, 10 October 2011, with every bar in place. · Original material
Looking up through the passage to the glass bridge, where the word Types glows in white letters on the LED bars The same view with a different message passing over the bridge
‘Types’ on the bridge above the passage, and a visitor’s message a moment later. · Original material · Photo: Martina Pipprich

From the model to the real bridge.

A few weeks after the opening the letters ran over the glass bridge as planned: dense enough to read, scattered again on either side.

Type a message, look up, wait for the bridge.

Our documentary film shows the façade in use. In June 2012 a school competition, ‘SMS an Gutenberg’ (text messages to Gutenberg), sent its entries to the façade during the Johannisnacht festival.

  1. Send

    Any phone could write on the museum.

    From our documentary film, Mainz 2012. · Original material

  2. Look up

    On the square in front of the museum, people looked up at the façade.

    From our documentary film, Mainz 2012. · Original material

  3. Read on the bridge

    The points come together on the glass bridge, here as ‘Gutenberg-Museum’ above the passage.

    From our documentary film, Mainz 2012. · Original material

06 / Four venues

One idea, adapted to four buildings.

The exhibition travelled, and each venue got a façade of its own, built from the same parts: text messages as input, X-Wall bars and Nikolaus Völzow’s software. Ralf Dringenberg, Anja Stöffler and I adapted it to each building. These were simpler set-ups than Mainz, which remained the conceptual core.

  1. Gutenberg-Museum, Mainz

    2011–2024. A long façade and a glass bridge. The message turns into text only on the bridge.

  2. Galerie im Prediger, Schwäbisch Gmünd

    Sep–Nov 2012. Five windows of the former monastery, facing the street.

  3. Dortmunder U

    Sep 2013 – Mar 2014. The window of the ‘Lautsprecher’ (loudspeaker) on level 4: 368 bars, with a hashtag code.

  4. Alte Post, Schwäbisch Gmünd

    Apr–Oct 2014. LED bars in the glazed stairwell of the HfG building.

Buildings schematic, after the plans for each venue, 2011–2014. · Illustration
An arched window of the Galerie im Prediger filled with rows of LED bars, the words Moving Types below The same window at night, glowing letters M, o and v passing through it
Galerie im Prediger, 2012: by day the bars sit behind the old windows; at night a message passes through one of them. · Original material · Photo: Dominik Witzke / Adrian Jehle

In Dortmund, passers-by set the typography.

A hashtag and five digits at the start of a message changed how it appeared: background colour, text colour, size, speed and letter spacing. Zero left the choice to chance.

The colours ran from 1 to 9: white, red, green, blue, yellow, violet, orange, turquoise and black. Size, speed and spacing went from – – – – to + + + +, with 5 as standard.

  1. 2Back­groundred
  2. 1Text colourwhite
  3. 8Size+ + +
  4. 5Speedstandard
  5. 0Spacingrandom
‘#21850 Moving Types ist ab jetzt in Dortmund!’ (‘Moving Types is now in Dortmund!’), the example from the info sheet of August 2013, digit by digit; colours and steps approximated. · Reconstruction

07 / What remains

The façade outlived the exhibition by more than a decade.

In Mainz from October 2011 until 2024, with around 3,000 messages in the first six months, tests included. Three more façades followed in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Dortmund, 2012–2014.

Reflection

Making reading depend on a place was the strongest decision and the riskiest: from most of the square, the façade read as a pattern, not as text. What I would do differently: test the reading moment on site at night, earlier, and give the rest of the façade a cue that leads the eye to the bridge.

Team, Mainz 2011
Dominik Witzke, Luise Pescheck, Adrian Abele · concept, technical planning and set-up
With
Prof. Ralf Dringenberg, Prof. Anja Stöffler · z zg, HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd and Hochschule Mainz · later façades together with Dominik Witzke
Software · sound · LEDs
Nikolaus Völzow · Felix Urban · Richter lighting technologies (sponsor)
Film and photos
Documentary film 2012: Onofrio Di Franco, Adrian Jehle, Marcel Müller, Dominik Witzke · Photos: Martina Pipprich (Mainz, 2011), Dominik Witzke / Adrian Jehle (Galerie im Prediger, 2012)
References
Concept video, 2011 ↗ · Documentary film, 2012 ↗ · Moving Types case study →

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