The Value Lab Asia is a collaborative, digitally augmented environment for a wide range of applications, such as participatory urban planning and design, stakeholder communication, information visualisation and discovery, remote teaching and conferencing. It includes a 33 megapixel video wall, three large displays with touch overlays, a number of smaller, mobile multi-touch enabled displays, and extensive video conferencing capabilities. The Value Lab Asia is the younger sibling of the Value Lab Zurich, built at ETH Zurich’s ScienceCity by Gerhard Schmitt, Remo Burkhard, Jan Halatsch and Antje Kunze of the Chair of Information Architecture in 2007/08. It therefore borrows many of the concepts of the Value Lab Zurich, such as being set in a friendly environment that operates in daylight conditions, however comes with updated state-of-the-art hardware and a different look.

The Value Lab Asia was conceived in the second half of 2011, and built in only two months from January 2012 to March 2012. It has been in regular operation since then. We are currently working on a more extensive documentation. Below you find the basic technical specifications.

If you are interested in visiting and/or using the facility, please feel free to contact me at arisona@arch.ethz.ch

Brief Technical Specifications

• Video wall, 4.9 x 2.7m, running at native 7680 x 4320 resolution (roughly 33 megapixels), driven from a single machine. Therefore, most applications run out of the box.
• Display wall with three 82" multi-touch displays, also driven from a single machine.
• Several 40" mobile multi-touch units, including mini-PC, thus completely autonomous.
• Tandberg-based video conferencing with one fixed and one mobile camera. Can be flexibly configured to run on video wall as well as display wall.
• Integrated video recording and production.

Institution: ETH Zurich’s Future Cities Laboratory
Location: Singapore
Period: Since 2011
Project lead, concept, system specification: Stefan Arisona
Interior design: Stefan Arisona in collaboration with Plasmadesign
System integration: PAVE System Pte Ltd

I am co-founder and scientific director of ETH Zurich’s Digital Art Weeks. The Digital Art Weeks, an annually recurring festival, are concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of a symposium, workshops and performances, the program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of the application of technology in the arts. In 2008 and 2010, a very successful version of Digital Art Weeks took place in Shanghai and Xi’an, China, and currently DAW'13 (early 2013) in Singapore is preparation…

https://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/

One of my personal highlights of the series of past Digital Art Weeks was the special opening day and the keynote of Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-2008) in 2007, as I have always admired his ambivalent position towards computer and information technology. At DAW07, we also screened the documentary ‘Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work.’ by Peter Haas and Silvia Holzinger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_LCLjqCTXs

Festival History

• 2013 - Singapore
• 2011 - Victoria, BC, Canada
• 2010 - Xi’an, China
• 2008 - Shanghai, China
• 2007 - Zurich, Switzerland
• 2006 - Zurich, Switzerland
• 2005 - Zurich, Switzerland