Medien 634

The 634 is a pachinko parlour at Osaka. The pachinko is a slot machine, a vertical variant of the pinball machine in which one projects steel balls without being able to influence their movements. The shelter of the 634 proposes to the public space a singular echo to the hallucinatory din of the steel balls in the gaming room, with a spectacular lighting device of the façade. The building is a cube consisting of curtain walls made of glass. However, these façades are blind. To concentrate the players require privacy from urban activity and a temporary rupture of a constraining social bond. A discontinuity exists between interior and exterior; the glazed frontage does not any longer play the role of a transparent interface: it is a structure of glass in front of a concrete wall. However, in the interspace a light projector is placed behind each glass plate. A computer program controls and synchronizes the projectors, thus animating various luminous patterns on the surface of the building. When the lights are off, the façade reflects the urban panorama which disappears as a whole or in part when the lights are lit, and appears fragmented according to the configurations of the permanently moving luminous animations.
The installation consists of a video projected directly onto a wall of the exhibition space. The video is made up of about thirty shots each showing a sequence of animation of the 634 according to various points of view, from the general plan to the close-up on a glass plate. The DVD is programmed in such a manner that the access to each sequence is random. The video thus is in a permanently editing mode, the order of the sequences being always different. Lastly, between each sequence, in one moment a black screen slips in, making the image to disappear completely from the surface of projection.