NORDHAVN – MOSAIC

In relation to the exhibition ”Nordhavn – the sustainable city of the future” presenting the plans for the municipality of Copenhagen’s ambitious development of Nordhavnen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kollision was asked to develop an interactive installation involving the users. Based on a concept developed by 2+1, the installation consisted of a number of ‘magic’ cubes, which could be combined into collages and statements expressing the visitors’ notion of the Nordhavn area in the future.

Kollision created a setup based on a camera monitoring the surface of the floor. On the surface 2+1’s magic cubes could be moved, rotated and configured to create collage-like expressions. When cubes above a certain threshold had been moved and configured by the users – creating a new image – a countdown, displayed on a large screen next to the floor, was activated. When the counter was finished, the camera captured an image of the cubes, storing it in a database and presenting the image on another screen, integrated into a mosaic of previous images stored by other users. During the project more than 100 different images were captured each day.

For the project Kollision developed a generic mosaic capable of presenting images of various sizes and aspects in a grid structure. The mosaic is living its own life based on a number of rules displaying one image in full size at a time, scaling and translating all other images in the mosaic according to their position in the grid. When there is activity on the floor the live video feed from the ceiling mounted camera is scaled up to let users follow their construction. All images captured are mirrored to a website where users can navigate in the mosaic. The mosaic for Nordhavn was later developed into Kollision’s Mosaic software, used in a number of other projects.