pipilotti rist creates a world of colorful visuals for school in denmark

at first glance, there’s nothing unusual to see when you enter the new danish school of media and journalism in aarhus, but in the darker hours the building transforms. a giant colorful curtain slowly pulls in front of a large window area. a large mirror ball begins to rotate, and the lights start to dim. next, the building is covered in a fantastic world of visuals created by artist pipilotti rist of atelier rist.

images by kollision

four large projection areas on floors, walls and ceilings slide in and out of each other, showing visitors a new reality and view of the world. the projection in the canteen area is partly shattered into thousands of rotating light dots by the mirror ball that sets the entire room in a slow hypnotic motion. people, plants, furniture, and the building are draped in colors and amorphous shapes showing fragments of nature and everyday objects creating a spectacular immersive experience.

pipilotti rist / atelier rist carefully created all the video content in relation to the specific projection areas and fabricated the large curtain. the artwork was curated by creator projects and developed in collaboration with kollision who was the technical lead. arkitema architects designed the school and took part in the dialogue about spatial integration and CIPEX handled the hardware installation.

kollision was responsible for designing and developing the player software that runs pipilotti rist’s choreography. the system decides at which times the installation should run and in which configuration, such as the intensity and geometric adjustment of the projector image. the system takes solar angles into account and receives data on cloud cover from a weather station. from this, the system makes sure that the artwork runs optimally in relation to sunrise, sunset and weather conditions. the software also starts and stops the mirror ball and activates the curtains. 

last but not least, the software can also take control of the functional lights in the building, by adjusting the intensity on the adjacent light sources to create a balance between the artwork and school activities. the artwork was funded by new carlsberg foundation, obel family foundation, salling foundations, spar nord foundation, beckett-fonden, danish arts foundation and FEAS.

project info:

project name: (earth lights and ping-pong with the sun) jordlys og pingpong med solen

client: danish school of media and journalism (DMJX)

project partners: pipilotti rist / atelier rist, creator projects, CIPEX, arkitema architects

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: lynne myers | designboom