Gelitin
:
Design of the Mobile Phone Tower in Krems-Stein
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The artist collective gelatin won the competition for the integration of a mobile phone radio mast in the urban fabric with a humorous proposal that addresses the topic of communication and technology. Movements in the vicinity of the mast are translated into acoustic signals and made audible via a loudspeaker.
Gelatin, a collective of artists, won the competition for the design-based integration of the 36 m high GSM-transmission facility in the town setting of Krems with their humorous and poetic proposal playing on the theme of communication and technology. The artists’ intervention made the mobile communication tower an acoustic center which transferred the movement in 2000 different acoustic signals and broadcast them by loud-speaker in the surroundings. By means of a video camera on the tower, the traffic of the near-by national road was documented. A computer using image recognition software analyses the image and feeds it into a software developed by the artists. Once a level of visual saturation has been reached the software elicits a sound from a collection of human affective sounds. This way the traffic influences the mood and the response of the tower that has been romantically animated by the artists. As a lone observer of things happening in its environment the tower expresses its emotional state vis-à-vis them.
(Cornelia Offergeld)
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