Pixelsex - changing the KPN Tower into the world's largest media façade

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Lifesciences live in Rotterdam: Near realtime transmission of a myxo bacteria simulation from TU Dresden to the 80 m high lightwall of the KPN
Telecom Tower in Rotterdam built by Renzo Piano. September 2006.

Read more about the background of the
project on the mainpage or watch a short
movie with more impressions ( qt, 1241 Kb).
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“Pixelsex” is a large art & science project in public space by the German artist Tim Otto Roth. In 2005 & 2006 it brought “life” to the world’s largest light façade at KPN Tower in Rotterdam built by Renzo Piano. The fight about life and death was visualized in a minimalist manner by a so called cellular automaton, whereby the pixels – the single picture elements – do have sex with each other, new pixels are born and other pixels die. By its amoeba like movement Pixelsex animates in a literal sense the 900 green Planon lamps of the giant facade with a height of about 80 (!) metres.

It is the first time that dynamical content is shown at the KPN tower’s façade! Therefore Tim Otto Roth connected in cooperation with cologne digital the façade to the internet and transmits in near real-time scientific simulations based on the pixelsex principle from Dresden/Germany to Rotterdam. He cooperated with Jörn Starruß, member of an eminent bio modelling research group at the High Performance Computing Centre at Technische Universität Dresden who created a cellular automaton showing the group dynamics of myxo bacteria.

For his unconventional projects in public space Tim Otto Roth received several important awards like the “International Media Art Award” from the Center for Arts and Media ZKM Karlsruhe and the “German Light Award LUX.US”. (read more....)

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