Cybrid Landscape
“Cybrids – a link on the continuum between concrete objects and abstract data. The line that separates data from objects represents a continuum rather than a division. Today there are situation where data and concrete objects work together to create new spatial entities, herein called ‘cybrids’. A cybrid is a hybrid of physical and electronic spaces.” (Peter Anders 2001)
Cybrid Landscape explores how the physical properties of a space can be merged into a virtual space, or a cybrid in this case. A 3D virtual landscape represents the atria of a physical building. As people walk around the physical space, they wear away the landscape in virtual space, showing a history of movement throughout the day. This can be used to study movement in a building, but also be presented to the visitors to make them aware of the intelligent building and see if they would alter their path once they knew the effect they were having on the virtual landscape.
System
Portland Square in Plymouth is installed with Arch-OS, an operating system for buildings. ‘Arch-OS represents an evolution in intelligent architecture, interactive art and ubiquitous computing. An ‘Operating System’ for contemporary architecture (Arch-OS, ‘software for buildings’) has been developed to manifest the life of a building and provide artists, engineers and scientists with a unique environment for developing transdisciplinary work and new public art.’
‘The Arch-OS vision tool monitors the flow of people through the building, and provides a stream of visual data to the Core Arch-OS. In the Arch-OS vision system, the composite video signals of the cameras are pre-amplified, then sent to three PCs in the Arch-OS control room. Each PC acquires live images with a frame grabber card and processes them using a dedicated motion detection and tracking software.’ Cybrid Landscape interprets the vision system data through a network connection.
Further reading
‘Arch-OS: An operating system for buildings‘ (PDF)
Peter Anders & Michael Phillips, ACADIA Conference 2004, which features Cybrid Landscape.
