For his thesis project, Javier Lloret turned a building into a giant, solvable Rubik's Cube. Making use of the media facade of the Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, he projected the world's most famous handheld puzzle onto a huge scale - inviting passers-by to solve the puzzle. In the process, Lloret transformed the nearby area, showing that (when used correctly) technology can make the urban environment more fun.
Read on to find out how Lloret did it...
How It Works
By creating a blank white Rubik's cube containing a series of motion tracking systems, input information was fed to software which calculated where the colors would be on the cube. This was then fed to the media facade of the Ars Electronica, effectively allowing users to manipulate the building-size puzzle with their hands.
In doing this, new aspects are brought to the process of solving the puzzle: first, as only two sides can be seen at once, it becomes harder to track individual squares and lends an added challenge to the process of solving the cube; and second it takes a fairly private activity and turns it into something extremely public, with everyone nearby able to watch your progress (or perhaps lack of it) in solving the facade.
Transforming the area into the location for a communal puzzle-solving challenge, the project is a fantastic demonstration of how technology can be used simply to make cities, and public life, more entertaining.
