Spheres, 2008

From an indoor piazza at the BMW Museum visitors can explore the seven ‘houses’ that accommodate the different parts of the exhibition. The multi-storey houses allow visitors to see the piazza, the vehicles exhibited on it and the other museum visitors from above, creating an impression of a public space.

Spheres is a mediatecture covering the inner walls of the space with 3D graphics and moving image and expands the perception of the space.

The 700 square metres of wall space surrounding the piazza are covered with white monochrome LEDs clad with opaque architectural glass. In this way, the LEDs are no longer identifiable as a technical system or classic video screen, but become simply part of a dynamic façade.

The façades are illuminated with purely abstract and abstract-figurative moving images. Around 20 different animations create an atmosphere of technical sophistication with a poetic, emotional dimension. Immersed in this flow of images, visitors experience the space in a new way each time they pass through it, thus expanding its perceived dimensions even further.

The animations are mostly auto-active. However, if relatively few visitors are in the museum, the system switches into reactive mode. A video-tracking system picks up the exact coordinates and movements of the visitors present, who can then directly influence the graphics. Visitors are thus involved in the visual appearance of the museum and experience it as a dynamic environment effected by their presence.

The BMW Museum is a joint project of ART+COM (spatial media design, interactive installations) and Atelier Brückner (architecture, exhibition design).