El Muro

A wall writes on itself - a thermocromic display

Introduction

This project is about humans and walls. walls as artboards, as a medium, as object for agression and as object of meaning.
Even before mankind had invented the words art and private property, there have been drawings on walls, today so called Graffitis. Since then this form of art has devoloped further, some people always had the need to express their thoughts and feellings on walls (you could say graffiti is older than private property). There are many different forms of graffiti: Graffiti (spread your name over the city, with "Tags" and "Pieces"), politically motivated graffitos, Street Art (self-made posters, stencils)etc. These arts are performed in subcultures and the artists very often do not really care if their art is seen by the rest of the society, neither does society really care about it.

Apart from that there's a history of using walls for official advertisements and announcements, thus they have been an important medium in public space: wall-papers, posterwalls, billboards etc.
As a wall is always part of architecture it also has a meaning (representation of wealth, nationality, etc). A special form of architecture is a wall of its own, for example the Berlin Wall, the wall which is currently being built between israel and palestine or the massive fence at the us/mexican border. On one hand these walls function as obstacle and threat, on the other hand they are an important political statement expressed in architecture.
Who is protected by this wall? who is included? who is excluded? why do people or states need these walls?

Concept

This ambiguous relationship between people and walls is used here. The wall itself "has the word" and expresses it's thoughts about this (usually) passive architecture and its relationship to humans. Political Graffitos, taken from walls (mostly from the Berlin Wall) which question this bizzare architecture are written mechanically on the wall, the wall scribes on its own surface.

"El Muro" is situated in the middle of a room, like a monolith from another planet (the appearance reminds of the alien monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey), and repeats the statements over and over again. These diminish immediately after they've been written, just like the political statements (ideas/utopias/protest) in the real world appear and diminish after some time, and just like the way these political graffitos work: people write them to adress the cityzens of their city without even reaching them.

Video Documentation

Technology

Inside the wall is a Roland DPX-3300 plotter. With a soldering iron the plotter draws on a canvas which is layered with thermochromatic ink. The canvas is heated partially and changes its color. After the heat diminishes the color changes back to its original state.
With this alternative display it is possible to write words or draw simple illustrations.

Software: Processing
Hardware: Roland Plotter DPX-3300

by Willy Sengewald & Richard The