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Russia and Germany. From Confrontation to Cooperation

We created the media installation for the exhibition “Russia and Germany. From Confrontation to Cooperation” which was on display in 2015 at Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau and presented by the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst in cooperation with the State Historical Museum of Moscow.

STIMMEN

STIMMEN was a participative installation that gave visitors a voice in the ongoing discussion around German-Russian relationships, both past and present. . It was developed for the exhibition “RUSSIA AND GERMANY. FROM CONFRONTATION TO COOPERATION” at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin.

In the installation, speech was analyzed and visualized in various information graphics to give visitors an overview of the diversity of opinions in the discussion around German-Russian relations. The spoken words were played back as an atmospheric soundscape, letting visitors engage with the subject and each other on a personal level.

Throughout the course of the exhibition, the visualized content grew into a broad catalog that was filled by the visitors themselves, thereby creating a new platform for discussion and exchange.

PROCESS

Visitors were given a spoken statement or answer to one of five questions about German-Russian relations in politics, sports, art and culture. The speech was then recognized and analyzed by an automated system.

The grammar and semantics of the words were identified by the system, using several analysis tools based on machine learning. The algorithms were customized to recognize special words and phrases relevant to the exhibition, enabling us to visualize the quantity and relationships between relevant politicians, organizations, places. This gave us new insights: Which verbs and adjectives are most commonly used to describe a given topic? Who are the most important actors and which properties are assigned to them? What are the overall tendencies of a certain question?

Additional information was gathered from the internet in real time and integrated into the visualizations to give context to the discussion. For example, all mentioned locations were placed on a map to place the relationships in a global context.

SETUP / TOOLS

The interface was built as a custom web app powered by modern HTML5 features and the speech recognition was realised using Google’s Web Speech API.

After being collected, the speech data was sent over the network to a VVVV application, which handled the database connection, stored and retrieved the data, and served as the central hub to integrate the different text analysis tools like Text Razor and Tree Tagger. All visualizations were generated in real time with VVVV.

GALLERY OF ENCOUNTERS

The entrance-installation welcomed visitors in the form of a large wall covered in photographs of iconic moments in German-Russian relations. A projection map highlights each photograph in a logical sequence.

Through this introduction, visitors were given a taste of the visual and audio exhibition that was to follow. The photographs in the entrance hall later became jumping off points for the discussions and topics they would dive into.

EXHIBITION

Media Concept / Design
schnellebuntebilder

Robert Pohle
Sebastian Huber
Johannes Timpernagel
Ann-Katrin Krenz
Michael Burk

Exhibition Design
büroberlin

Graphic Design
Little Adén, Hanna Adén

Light Planning
Michael Flegel

STIMMEN

Creative Direction
Johannes Timpernagel

Design + Programming
Ann-Katrin Krenz
Michael Burk

Tools
VVVV
Google Web Speech
Text Razor

GALLERY INSTALLATION

Creative Direction / Animation
Robert Pohle

Programming
Sebastian Huber

Design of Installation
Ann-Katrin Krenz

DOCUMENTATION

Music
Valentin von Lindenau
kling klang klong

Camera
Boas Schwarz

Editing
Michael Burk

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music

Bessonitsa II :: $!03(!3$!3-III-@

Please view in HD 1080

may 2016

credits Antokhio

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www.intolight.de/en/projects/zalando-interactive-catwalk Together with ACNE, Berlin, intolight developed an interactive setup for some of Zalando’s very special fashion events in 2015. Fashion-lovers could show their greatest looks and outfits with their own catwalk moves. Extracted from the real background, their bodies were placed into virtual surroundings representing the look of Zalando’s campaign. A bit like in The Matrix, their movements changed and bent the virtual space.
Once satisfied with their own performance, users could share the video via email or their personal facebook profile and show the world how cool they look. We took the Zalando Catwalk on a road-trip to the vivid fashion scenes of Stockholm, Amsterdam and Antwerp.