2x5 (Brothers)

"2x5" is a permanent kinetic light installation for the new “Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts” by the architects Diller Scofidio Renfro (-> http://openbuildings.com/buildings/creative-arts-center-profile-42257). The art installation by Berlin artist group "realities:united" has been realized for Brown University in the framework of a building-site art competition with international invitations.

2x5 is a time-based work and makes use of an established commercial technical format known from the advertising industry: the installation consists of two mechanical “poster scrollers” in a special format. The identically constructed machines are each ca. 4.4m tall and 1.8m wide. Motor-driven winding cores are mounted above and below in the casings. Each pair of winding cores has 5 abutting, full-surface monochromatic colored prints on textile stretched between them that can be scrolled to appear behind a glass surface, illuminated from behind.

The behavior of the two apparatuses is coordinated through a shared control mechanism.
Usually, both of the two poster scrollers shows the same color surface, or at least each apparatus shows one full color surface. Occasionally, however, the two canvases stop in the half- or quarter-position, so that an apparatus shows two colors at the same time. Also the intensity of the backlighting can be adjusted in accordance with the stopping positions of the color surfaces.

The installation is controlled via a series of algorithms that influence the speed and synchronicity of the behavior of the two scrollers, the color (or color combination) appearing on each scroller, and the
intensity of the backlighting.

The complexity of the installation’s behavior is temporally coupled to the progress of the university’s year. At the beginning of the academic year, the machines tend to both show the same color equally intensely backlit, and the changes are usually fundamental, i.e., from one color entirely to another. In the course of the year, the probability increases that the two machines will show behavior independent of each other. Then the spatial experience is shaped by up to four different colors of differing intensities at once.

With two to four changes per day the frequency of the change is so low that visitors initially experience the installation mostly as static in the respective configuration. The users of the building – mostly students or University staff – can only perceive the changes of the color code, and especially the
creeping erosion of the installation's behavior pattern after a longer period.
Wasn’t there something else yesterday?

Description by the artists