Gold Installation Design · 2023
Spot On Interactive Light Installation
by Responsive Spaces and Michael Holzer
- A' Design Award 2023 Gold Winner in Installation Design
- Awarded April 15, 2023
- CLIENT: Creative Region / City of Linz
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 538,663
- Verification code 0F21A3F2D7 · Verify this award
About Spot On Interactive Light Installation
Empty shop windows are boring. Especially due to the Covid-19 pandemic empty shop windows became an even more urgent matter for the city of Linz. But in particular, in great locations throughout the city those, those spaces are also unused presentation areas that can be put to good use in the meantime. Therefore this unique shop window installation and the concept of "Spot On" behind it were developed. Interactive light installations turn empty windows into engaging and extraordinary art pieces, while also offering local businesses a valuable temporary stage. We. Love. Linz.
Situated within the evolving tradition of responsive environments and experiential placemaking, this installation by Responsive Spaces demonstrates how architectural apertures may be transformed into dynamic portals of chromatic and participatory engagement, the work inviting consideration of the window as both membrane and medium. The technical achievement manifests through the precise calibration of vertical luminous elements whose spectral transitions create a harmonic visual rhythm, each tube contributing to a collective composition that suggests both the equalizer bars of audio visualization and the vertical striations found in abstract color field painting traditions. The golden yellow typographic overlay operates as both practical wayfinding element and aesthetic counterpoint, its warm temperature establishing complementary dialogue with the dominant magenta-violet field while demonstrating sophisticated understanding of color relationship and visual hierarchy. One observes how the installation negotiates the complex optical conditions created by reflective glass surfaces, embracing rather than suppressing the ghostly superimposition of external architectural elements that creates temporal depth and contextual integration with the surrounding urban fabric. The inclusion of interactive elements, suggested by the QR code and invitational text, positions this work within contemporary participatory art practices that seek to dissolve the boundary between observer and participant, artwork and social platform. The chromatic choices evoke associations with digital screens, club lighting, and contemporary visual culture while maintaining sufficient sophistication to transcend mere spectacle, suggesting deeper meditation on attention, communication, and the phenomenology of illuminated space. Viewers might consider how such interventions transform the experience of urban passage, creating moments of visual delight and contemplative pause within the flow of daily movement, and how the interplay of reflection and transmission speaks to broader questions of transparency, boundary, and the permeability of public and private realms.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Empty shop windows are boring. But especially in good locations, they are also unused presentation areas that can be put to good use in the meantime. For example, to offer local businesses a valuable temporary stage. Best of all in the form of this interactive shop window installation. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic additional empty shop windows happened to pop up in our hometown Linz. Therefore, in the summer of 2021, the concept of 'Spot On' was born.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The whole installation has a size-flexible setup. The initial installation was 4 meters in width, 2 meters in height and 1.2 meters in depth.
- Tags
- interactive installation, light installation, mobile interface, shop window, art installation, digital installation
- Production Technology
- The whole installation consists of a easy to setup and remove wooden frame to which 24 DMX-controllable LED tubes with single RGB Pixel control are mounted.
The mobile website that lets everybody interact with the light installation has a MQTT based backend that is parked in the cloud, so every bypasser can reach it with his or her smartphone.
The light installation itself is also connected to the internet via a SIM card and mobile internet to receive commands from all users that a surfing the mobile website. - Design Challenge
- It was the goal to positively utilise ugly (because empty) shopwindows in the inner areas of Linz. We needed a flexible hardware setup to adapt to different measurements of shopwindows as well as add extra value to argue funding. Therefore we integrated the presentation of local businesses which were also hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. To engage with bypassers we offered them a mobile interface that let them easily take creative control of the light installation and display short messages.
- Project Duration
- Since August 2021 in Linz
- Operation Flow
- As soon as one stands on a marked point in front of the shop window, the complex arrangement of lamps and light unravel for the viewer and an interactive ticker become legible. Via QR code and smartphone, own messages and crazy light effects can be controlled in the shop window.
- Research
- As a studio for interactive brand experiences we were able to apply our learnings from other projects in the B2B field to this public space installation. The overall creative process to design the setup, the light effects as well as the possibilities of interaction was done within the creative team of the project. This process benefitted from our interdisciplinary team setup and approach.
- Inspiration
- The heart of the installation was a voluminous arrangement of controllable LED lights. When viewers were 'on spot', they could design individual messages using their smartphones and send them directly to the system. A jury regularly selected new young companies and startups from among all the applicants, for whom this consequently meant to be in the spotlight in the shop windows.
WE. LOVE. LINZ. - Image Credits
- Photo Credits: Responsive Spaces
Video Credits: Eyup Kus
Colors of Spot On Interactive Light Installation
Get Spot On Interactive Light Installation
Grand Interview about Spot On Interactive Light Installation
Especially during and since the pandemic, inner cities have quite a huge problem with empty shop windows. Stores going out of business led to those "not good looking" empty windows and rooms behind them, that are very visible but not taken care of by anybody. This leads to an overall unattractive sight and makes life even harder for the stores that are still there. We thought, we need to do something against this in our hometown Linz.
We always strive for engagement or interaction, because we believe that activating people to get in dialogue with location-based installations leads to real life experiences that make people aware of the space around them. And by enabling interaction, we have possibilities to allow people to influence those experiences individually or even leave some sort of mark for others.
Since we never knew, how long one particular shop window would be empty and therefore available for our installation, we needed to be able to move fast to another one. The dream scenario was, that we never stay long at one location, because that would have meant, that the empty shopwindow was not empty no more, because a new store was moving in. So ideally, we would always be on the move and therefore we needed to be as flexible as possible. By the way, we built more than one installation, because the concept was designed to have several installations running at the same time.
The light installation itself was meant to make the empty shop window instantly attractive as soon as we moved in. But the intention was also to draw attention of by-passers. And once we had that attention, we wanted to use it for something impactful for the overall challenge of having a tough time for businesses. Therefore, half of the shop window was always dedicated to the light installation, but the other half was basically a flexible advertising platform for all kinds of companies, that could benefit from the attention we drew. Those presented companies rotated quite frequently to give opportunity to as many businesses as possible.
We wanted to create some simple and fun interaction through the glass of the shop window. Since every window was different, we needed to develop an interface, that is independent from that. Everybody got smartphones, so we chose those devices to be our interfaces. And - for interaction - latency, or better the lack of it, is key. You interact and the reaction follows instantly. Our technical focus was to be as speedy as possible in the reaction of the light installation after an interaction trigger at every smartphone that was connected.
As written in the previous answer, the interaction and it's quality was key. On the technical side it was about stability, reliability and speed. But even more important is the UX/UI design. It had to be easy to connect and even easier to understand at first sight, what the user can do and how to do it.
For us it was great to see this kind of recognition for a project like this. It also shone a light on the city of Linz for being daring enough to try a experimental project like this. Linz is a national hub for creative technology and be "allowing" this project to happen, it once again showed that.
We wanted to create something that looks recognisable because the installation was designed to move around in the city. While my team at Responsive Spaces focussed on the digital design part and the technology, Michael Holzer, a local design hero, joined the project team to round out an overall design. Michael und the team of RS have known each other for quite a while, which is why the interdisciplinary collaboration was nothing but fun and smooth sailing.
The "bad learning" that we had to observe was, that many people do not care about their surroundings too much. We all are trained to fade out everything around us, because we often consider it as distraction. What "great learning" did we have? Those people who dared to look up, to discover Spot On and that dare to spend some moments with it, got rewarded with a surprising experience for everybody around them to see. We could observe people that got pleasantly surprise and were obviously happy about it.
Back to the pandemic part of the concept. It is immensely important for humans to not forget about the importance of real, physical spaces. Of analog experiences if you want to call it like that. I believe, by bridging the digital, personal spaces of everybody's smartphones to the analog, public spaces of shop windows in the city, we did just that.