Aram Bartholl – Blog

Unfortunately my concept for Second City “Sandbox” at Pfarrplatz in Linz won’t be realised for Ars Electronica. But I am thinking of doing this project after Ars Electronica in Berlin in autum. In fact I shouldn’t design a whole Sandbox like I did in this image for Linz. I think it’s better to invite people for 3 days to build own objects in sandbox style. I wonder how greefing attacks could look like in RL? ;-) I love sandboxes. It’ll be fun.

Find some typical Second Life sandbox pictures on flickr.

This is not a cosy Berlin cafe or classic fast food truck. The TV film set of some german GSG9 soap occupied the whole street in front of our office. Ok, that’s nothing special. Film sets are all over Berlin all the time.

But working so much in public space situations lately made me think about this. Somehow public space is turned into privat space for one day. Suddenly 40 people having lunch in front of your door. They all know each other, they have strange rules and you certainly don’t belog to them.
“What are you doing here? This is street is our’s !”
….”Sorry, I live here.” ;-)

Good news! Upcoming project Chat is part of the Second City area I am working on at Ars Electronica. But I will talk about this whole Ars-Second-Life topic later.

The project Chat is of course the next stepp coming from the project Speech Bubble. In fact the concept of Chat is even older than the Speech Bubble project.

Project description goes something like this:

Chat is an interactive installation and a performance in
public space.
Similar to online computer games like Second Life or
World of Warcraft two persons are having a conversation
by writing text messages on a keyboard. The speech
bubble floating above the participants head displays the
written words of this ‘player’ in real time. The wireless
keyboard is connected to a PDA. A very small and light
weight LED beamer projects the text messages on the
translucent speech bubble. The whole equipment and
the speech bubble are attached to a stick which is carried
by a technician. These two technicians do follow each
participant individually so that the speech bubble stays
above the ‘players’ head even if they move.
It is recommended to show this piece at night or dark
places. Crowded clubs or conferences with many people
on a spot are a good environment to run this installation.

There is a more detailed german text version which will be translated for the AEC catalogue.

More infos about Ars Electronica and Second Life coming soon. Nice projects and workshops. It sgoing to be fun.

(By the way, the comment of Ahmet made me blog this. Sure, everybody wants the interactive speech bubble. Although I do like the first version very much)