The Effenaar is probably the most famous venue for pop music and youth culture in the Netherlands. What once started as a meeting centre for socio-critical youngsters has evolved into a prestigious pop-stage. The innovative architect bureau MVRDV was commissioned to design a new EFFENAAR, which opened in October of 2005. The building had undergone a complete metamorphosis through the architects’ design of a cubic, constructivist total space concept, with large areas of glass structuring the front and the back.
The German artist-duo Hartung & Trenz played with the concept of a light-text-installation and transformed the main facade of the EFFENAAR into a light box, on which short phrases are written: the so-called IDIOMS. As idioms are easily associated with pop songs, the function of the building is immediately recognized, without further need of explanation or background knowledge. At the same the idioms communicate with the observing public, inviting it to start a dialogue.
The typographical projection of Hartung and Trenz adapts to the clear cubic construction and seeks correspondence with sections and segments of letters and oversized word fragments. What, at first glance, looks like an adaptation of architectural elements in moving light surfaces, gradually condenses into typographical characters, letters, words, phrases and idioms which cover the entire facade as text areas and makes it shine. Writing, language, light and the dynamics of animation melt into a visual sound.
Foto: Claus Langer
About the artist
For more than 18 years Detlef Hartung and Georg Trenz have realized text projections for interior as well exterior spaces, predominantly working as a team. Their core subject is combining light, space and language; all three factors, when intermixed, can break down all other levels of meaning.
Music: Anton Zinkl
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