INTRODUCTION
Beneath the classic Victorian ceiling of Oslo's former railway station,
you enter a room of glass where, amongst many hundreds
of points of light, you find glowing portraits of all the Nobel
Peace Prize Laureates. This is the Nobel Field, the centerpiece
of the new Nobel Peace Center, a virtual garden grown from
one hundred LCD displays planted among a thousand twinkling
blades of LED grass. Each display honors the winner of a Peace
Prize and reacts to the approach of a person, revealing the winner's
story and philosophy.
Directed by Grete Jarmund and Paul H. Amble, the Nobel Field
was an extensive collaboration between the architects Adjaye/
Associates, Small Design Firm, and Timon Botez. From its
conception, the Nobel Peace Center aimed to be the realization
of a new kind of museum: one where the message and words
of the Nobel Laureates become both content and artifact. Grete
describes her initial vision of the Center:
At a very early moment,
Paul and I knew that the Laureates and their commitment had to
be communicated in a way that appeals both to the emotions and
to reason.
Save for a single Nobel Peace Prize medal, the entire
content of the Center was created through digital technologies. It
was our task to take the words of the Nobel Laureates and bring
them to life. Paul insisted that this was not going to be a memorial,
that it should be dynamic, it should look and feel contemporary.
Fittingly, the electronics, software, sound and graphics were entirely
custom, designed specifically for this space. Each Laureate
has an individual screen display, enclosed in a lucite stem, that
comes alive as you approach. A small sensor at the bottom
of the screen registers your presence, triggers animations on
the screen, and sends a wave of color across nearby LED stalks.
Synchronized audio spreads throughout the space. Architect
David Adjaye said of the room:
What is beautiful is that we're
living in an information age and for me the fabulous thing is to
dissolve the hardware and to make the software speak. Because
thats what's precious, and thats what's delightful about the time
we are in.
The Nobel Field becomes a living instrument, played
by visitors to the Center.
REACTIVE ENVIRONMENT
Adjaye/Associates imagined this unusual and hauntingly beautiful
space, including the crystalline details of the flowers and
grass. Small Design Firm expanded Adjaye s initial vision of the
space, adding reactive sensing and multi-channel sound to the
brief. We then set about designing the hardware, software infrastructure,
and aesthetic qualities of the space.
The electronic hardware was designed and fabricated by John
Rothenberg at Small Design Firm to manage a hundred Sonar
sensors and illuminate a thousand individually controllable
LEDs. The Sonar units are placed just below each LCD screen
and emit pulses of sound and wait for their reflection off nearby
visitors. By timing the interval between sending and receiving a
pulse, we can determine how close a visitor is to each screen.
Sonar allowed us to create a reactive space that responds
automatically to the presence of people within the Field. Visitors
move through the Nobel Field and it responds to their presence
in turn.
Together, Peter Adjaye, Eric Gunther, and Timon Botez produced
the sound for the installation. Timon explains:
Every graphic element
holds a piece of information. The sound has been produced
as an extension of this content. The composition is interactive
and every piece of audio has a connection to the visuals.
The
music in the room is a wonder unto itself. The composition is
distributed throughout the space, and the music dances between
all 16 speakers. Sounds move through the space with a life of
their own, the arrangement changing in response to the visitors
and their patterns of movement.
IMMERSIVE DISPLAY
We imagine this space as a single continuous display that surrounds
the inhabitants. Although a visitor might be looking at
an individual screen, their presence registers across the Field
in sound and points of light. As this person moves through the
space, they leave traces and echoes. Each display, every blade
of grass, and all sound are bound together by a central logic of
the space as a whole. At certain moments in time, this centrality
takes over the space and plays sequences of sound and image
across the entire Field.
A great deal of work went into designing an infrastructure that
could support the synchronization of so many unique hardware
and graphical elements. Timon and Eric collaborated to develop
the information structure, responsive behaviors, and graphic content
of the installation. Eric explains the challenging architecture
of the system: The brain of the field is a complex network of 34
computers running three different pieces of software talking to
each other and to 30 pieces of custom hardware. The elegance
of this system is that it clarifies the space. The discrete design
elements come together in a seamless whole, enabling you to
conceive of the space as a continuous display.
DEISGN SPECIFICATIONS
Pulse:
The portraits of Nobel laureates breathe in a gentle transition of
color. The speed with which each one breathes is related to the
age of the laureate - those that received the prize at a young age
breathe more rapidly than those who were honored relatively late
in life. Each of the 100 screens has a unique pulse and collectively
the screens produce a twinkling surface. Timon explains:
Information about the laureates drives the activity on the
screens. Although it might not be immediately obvious to the visitor,
this means the field can be explored on different levels .
Color:
Although each Laureate s contribution to peace is unique, we
can group winners into six general categories: those involved in
peace movements, humanitarians, human rights workers, disarmament
activists, negotiators and those who worked towards a
better organized world. Each portrait has been tinted in a shade
of blue corresponding to one of these categories.
Thresholds:
The content is presented in three sequential stages, triggered
by the proximity of a visitor to the screen. The raw Sonar data is
visible as a bar graph along the left margin. The content is presented
in relation to three thresholds. If there is no sonar activity
the Laureate s portrait pulses gently. As you approach, color fills
the screen and the Laureate s name is revealed. If you come
even closer, you release a sequence of information about that
year s laureate.
Content:
One of the biggest challenges in working at this scale is providing
the visitor with enough information without overwhelming
them. To avoid congestion, we wanted to show only enough to
satisfy the viewer s immediate curiosity and encourage them to
explore the Laureates more deeply in a later exhibit. We decided
to present a brief description of the Laureate s achievements,
followed by a representative statement in their own words. All of
this could be displayed in Norwegian and English over a sixty
second interval.
Movement:
Every so often the field undergoes a global transformation, where
all the design elements coalesce in a synchronized performance.
Like a passing rain shower, these events combines lights,
screens and sound together in a burst of activity independent of
the visitors actions. These performances contribute to a sense of
a the Nobel Field as a living space, surrounding the visitors.
MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
This room is an example of a new kind of relationship between
viewer and medium. The screen diffuses into the space and
takes on the characteristics of architecture by defining space and
creating paths through that space. Rather than facing a display,
as you would in a theater or your living room, or even moving
around it, as you would with a museum object, the Nobel Field invites
the viewer to inhabit the landscape of displays. As you pass
through the space, your perspective is continuously changing.
Each viewer has a unique perspective and these multiple views
form a conceptual space in the mind of the viewer. You become
an active participant in creating your own narrative of the Nobel
Peace Prize and its impact over the past century. Just as our
perspective from 2006 changes the way we see, for example, the
prize given to Henry Kissinger, we find that there is no one fixed
view of the prizes or prizewinners. Rather than an honor roll, or
worse a graveyard of names and faces, the Field should be seen
as an organic, living, and evolving garden whose fruits are the
ideas and ideals passed on to us by the Laureates.
At the opening of the Center, Wangari Maathai spoke of the Nobel
Field.
As you walk through the halls of this center and reflect
on the men and women who have been honored over the years,
you will see your own thoughts, dreams and aspirations. Indeed
a part of all of us is reflected here. As you see the challenges
and opportunities, you too will be inspired to take action to make
your world a more peaceful place.
The Field is a place where
the dream of Peace comes alive. More than a memorial to the
Laureates, it is a living testament to their ideas. The meaning and
power of these words deserve a stage of their own.
