No LED’s: a new kind of screen, which intentionally reflects and incorporates the natural variations of given light situations.
In cooperation with project partner Jonas Burki I explored a variety of models for displays based on sunlight. For our opto-mechanical constructions, we used familiar materials and methods that enable viewers to grasp how these displays function. Hence, our project’s ingenuity was not seen in how it develops or uses complicated technologies, but in how it intelligently combines simple physical phenomena with mechanical approaches to solving a problem. Sunlight is normally the natural enemy of displays that work with some sort of illuminant. Our project exploits this inherent weakness and, in keeping with its basic concept, explores potential uses of this free and inexhaustible light source. The project’s objective to use “(sun)light and shade as a medium of expression” carries on a tradition that goes far back into (art) history.
Here is how the “Plexipixel” Prototype works: sunlight illuminates a series of plexiglass rods; by means of an electromagnetical mechanism, it is possible to control whether sections of the pipes are covered with a metallic coin, in other words darkened, or not. As a controlling device, a bar with 50 electromagnets mounted (1 magnet per line) slides horizontally over the matrix. If an individual magnet is activated the coin is moved and covers the pixel, which prevents any light being conducted through the plexiglass and the pixel turns black.
