tim walter

the stock exchange of visions is a traveling installation originaly created by gregor kuschmirz which tries to provide an dialog between the visions of authorities in several disciplines and a broader audience. the artwork was part of the exhibition fabrica: les yeux ouverts at the centre george pompidou in paris, the trianale in milan and now at the shiodome italia in tokyo.

first of all i like the neat and clean design of the whole page which is part of the installation with the colored areas of the topics and the simple structure of the content. this simplicity fits in with the clear concept of the project where an expert explains his vision to which the visitor can either agree or disagree. this means that – no matter how detailed the vision is or how competent you are on this subject – you have to make a choice. all these outcomes are finally calculated and displayed just like a stock.

furthermore i like the idea of trading visions like stocks and thus create a market for them. but also i am not sure if this kind of  an opinion poll is really representing the acceptance of an idea. everyone can say if he or she likes or dislikes something, which is part of the basic idea of this project. but sometimes the actual content of the project does not shape this attitude but other social factors do. here i can see the risk that one’s opinion is manipulated by other people’s rating of an idea. so if some people haven’t made up their mind yet they will automatically agree with the opinion of a bigger group or stick to the contrary opinion. the question is if this idea would also work with better developed ideas and visions.

the following installations are also based on the idea of turning virtual data into real entities or events. but in these examples it is, in contrast to the digital waterfall, the other way round, not water in the air but air in water what represents the digital information.

the first bubble screen is the information percolator which is some sort of ambient display. here the bubbles are released in one of the 32 vertical tubes what makes it possible to create different images. but especially these dominant tubes somehow disturb the clarity of the display.

another artist who is creating bubble displays is stephanie andrews. she invented the bubble screen the thinktank and lifeblood within the years 2001 and 2002. she also intends to visualize digital data but somehow obtains no real control of the bubbles, which leads to nice looking patterns but still no traceable connection between the human interaction and the effect on the visualization.

beta tank also called their piece of work “bubble screen”. it precisely emits smaller and uniform bubbles but in the end, or at least in this video, the information is somehow hard to read.

this shows that it only makes sense to show clear informations on a display with a sufficient resolution, not to prove the weakness of the device. whereas vague displays, like the early bubble installations, always allow the designer to add the same blurriness of the source onto the visualization. as a result the display doesn’t try to communicate informations it could never produce.

greyworld adopted the idea of the raising information bits and created the installation the source in the london stock exchange.

the interactive installation bitfall, is an electronical artwork by the german artist julius popp from 2005. according to him, the artwork is seperated in two circuits; on the one hand the scientific machine, and on the other hand an artistic visualization of the always changing culture. the machine consists of 128 synchronized magnetic valves, in which the emitted water drops act like pixels, falling to the ground. as a result the information can not be displayed at once, but only sequential and for a short period of time. the artistic part is simply a software which is looking for keywords on the internet.

i really like the first (or actually the second) part of the artwork, which is the giant, impressive water display. despite the explanations of julius popp in his interview, i really don’t understand the connection between the display and this specific data source. aside from that, since the stunning display was, as far as i know, originally invented by pevnick design in 1979, one could also assume that popp got the idea of using this display with showing any kind of digital information.

so i think the interesting thing about this installation, is the way it shows us the principle of digital information. by looking at the display, we realize that it only needs two states of an object to turn something meaningless, like the water, into a tool for precise communication. in this case a “opened” or “closed” valve leads to either a waterdrop or not, whereas all the drops together finally somehow teleport a meaningful word into the room.

by the way, the digital water pavillion is another interesting example of use for this old but still innovative idea.