Ars Electronica: Entangled Sparks

Connecting Cities: Participatory City 2014

ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB (BASED IN AUSTRIA)
ENTANGLED SPARKS (LinzerSchnitte), 2014

Entangled Sparks is a programme that allows people to take a “pixel” of a media façade home in the shape of a ‘LinzerSchnitte’, a low-cost programmable FM broadcast receiver board. They can take the pixel anywhere in the city, and take over “godparenthood” for it.
This is comparable with the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, in which a particle shares certain properties with an inseparable counterpart. Here, a part of the façade is mapped to a single mobile pixel and vice versa; the building is extruded into the city and the city implodes into the building.
Owners of a pixel can coordinate with their friends in order to program their LinzerSchnitte devices to activate synchronously. The facade dissolves by means of participation: It becomes a transparent membrane and is no longer the outside of a cubature.
Pixels can blink, light up, fade, or do something completely unrelated to light; anything that can be controlled with a switch. Anything that can be “sparked” with electricity is possible. When a device is activated, its “entangled pixel” on the façade lights up.
The concept works according to aesthetical criteria as soon as the social criteria are fulfilled, i.e. if neighbourhoods collaborate. It also works as social reflection by visualizing where social co-operation is successful: A reflection of the city, visualized on the façade.

Film by Xar Lee