OnOff – Kopfkino

 

In the spring of 2012 we made a series of experimental excursions into our city, Berlin. Our idea was to activate the potentials of our urban setting; the blank facades, the busy streets, the characters that comprise what we understand as our city.

We designed a tool, an amplifier, that could be animated by the activity of the people in the area. Finding ourselves with limited resources, we turned to improvised, spontaneous methods of fabricating the object. We used a shopping trolley as our main body, and then filled as seemed best all the components necessary for the projection. Borrowed car batteries, projector and laptop, fixed in place with cable ties, and recycled wood, the new era of the amateur professionals is personified!

The Kopf Kino amplifies live actions with a camera and projects this action 10x enlarged onto the surrounding building facades. Curious passersby, inhabitants of the space begin to see the power of this object and spontaneously interact with its possibilities. Suddenly they become performers in their normal environment. They are empowered by their discovery and are able to use the object to mediate their role in the production of urban space.

Layering the actions and life of the street back onto the structures which in-part form it, has the effect of suspending the reality of the space. Interacting or not, when in action, by passers see their (public’s) actions played out on the walls of their local bank, the supermarket or an office building.

Although it is a tool with certain promising functionalities, the experimental aspects of its purpose has always been significant in the previous urban settings it had been plugged into. 

KOPFKINO is yet to discover Ludwigshafen ON/OFF are a young network of Architects, Designers, Filmakers and Urbanists. Our curiosity lies within the city, its complexity offers the ground for experiments into the contemporary condition and the opportuntiy to question, to tune and to discover new realities.

With each project we draw on our combined experience and unique skills to investigate and affect the cities live dimension. We primarily conceive of tools; structures both physical, social and fictional, which enable shared engagement with the citizens of the place in the experiments carried out.

 “Tools are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates himself in action to his society through the use of tools that he actively masters.”

Ivan Illich