The office building is located at Rosenthaler Straße 30, in the heart of the vibrant tourist centre of central Berlin. The media facade consists of various linked digital elements and invites interaction with sound, movement and touch. The projections behind the glass facade will especially become visible at dark and establish a relationship between the inside and the outside of the building.
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TECHNICAL POSSIBILITIES

Four screens in the windows along the Rosenthaler Straße consisting of daylight compatible backward projection displays positioned above each other in pairs
Four cameras above the backward projection DLP-units
Four microphones built into the framework construction between the windows, each of which associated with one primary display
At nightfall, big projections in the foyer and the storeys above the foyer permeate the building.
Marked areas with heartbeat sensors beside the main entrance encourage direct contact. Pulse and heart rate are displayed directly between the sensors on a tablet PC and control the projections in the building.
The rule of thumb is: All formats that can be played by Windows MediaPlayer can also be played by PlayVnP. A composite video signal can also be screened on each display (projector or DLP) of the installation.

SCREENING IN 2008

During daylight times between 8am and 7pm SAP’s own interactive advertising is screened, where a passer-by leaves watermarks. When the passer-by stops, the camera captures his movements, which are then interpreted as waves of water of various intensity and position spreading from the centre.

MODEL AND MOTIVATION

The media facade was established in cooperation between the software producer SAP and the Ars Electronica Center, Linz (Austria). The interactive facade is supposed to help to bring the “dead office compound at night time” to life and come into contact with passers-by.

“Not only the image changes when you get close to art. Access to sources of innovation also becomes more and more significant”, says Gabriele Hartmann, SAP Corporate Citizenship representative. The company is interested in the creative approaches of the not completely commercial sector. This sector has thereby won a financially strong sponsor that could become a potential client for spectacular projects.