Digital Art Installation Germany, Baden-Württemberg Light Projetion Demonstration, Architecture Design

‘Behaviour Morphe’ light mapping projection Karlsruhe

Baroque castle light mapping projection in Baden-Württemberg design by Zaha Hadid Architects

14 Sep 2017

‘Behaviour Morphe’ light mapping projection in Karlsruhe

Design: Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA)

Location: Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Southwest Germany

The Schlosslichtspiele Festival in Karlsruhe, Germany curates a programme of dynamic mapping projections on the façade of the city’s Baroque castle.

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) collaborated with leading digital artists and computer science researchers Andy Lomas and Mubbasir Kapadia, together with musician Max Cooper to create the ‘Behaviour Morphe’ light mapping projection for the 2017 Schlosslichtspiele Festival.

Exploring new forms of architecture, the 2017 Schlosslichtspiele connects digital spatial concepts with the 18th century masonry of the castle to explore how living spaces can be designed in the future.

ZHA’s projection showcases the latest digital spatial simulation tools the practice applies in the comprehensive analysis and planning of its architecture, and looks further ahead to concepts of spatial design of the future.

The projection on the castle’s façade reveals its interiors as digital laboratories of human behavioural simulation, demonstrating the circulation and congregation of digital actors programmed with artificial intelligence that interact with the spaces of the castle and each other.

Dynamic new virtual spaces are defined by using real-time data to interpret the virtual actors’ interactions. These digital spaces are then explored with iterative growth systems that emulate the evolutionary process of nature, demonstrating the potential of metamorphic simulations and digital morphogenetics.

As an architectural interpretation, the projection outlines ZHA’s Computational Design (ZH CODE) research group’s work in these iterative systems of development.

Max Cooper said, “ZHA’s ideas and work fit well with my musical approach, being based on human/machine boundaries, and emergence of biological forms from simulated systems of behaviour. I drew on a couple of tracks which fit the visual style and the development of the piece, which goes from a playful exploration of human interactions with an architectural space to a barrage of cellular forms and audio-visual intensity.

“I spent a lot of time working on the sound design to score each tiny event and ripple of visual processing to sync with the mapping across the front of the castle. From my perspective, the crux of the piece is in this synchronisation, bringing the sound to life through the painstaking and in-depth simulation and generative computational approaches of the visuals.”

‘Behaviour Morphe’ light mapping projection in Karlsruhe images / information received from Zaha Hadid Architects 140917

Zaha Hadid

Location: Karlsruhe, Germany, western Europe