Andras Sly Szalai

Hedera Digitalis is an installation build of 50 recycled mobile displays.

Background

Older mobile displays are cheap, and despite their small resolution and the few colors, they can be used. Since they are relatively easy to drive, our goal was to put together as many of them as possible into a single installation.

Setup

Hedera Digitalis constists of a minicomputer, 2 USB 2.0 FPGA boards with 25 recycled Nokia 6110 displays connected to each. The 50 displays are distributed randomly on the wall, still some of them add up to bigger screens. All the wires and electronic parts are attached to a transparent plexi glass, so they can be seen. This low-tech look makes the whole device retro, still elegant.

Content

With the current software, the content can be static images, computer generated animations, YouTube video-sets or any prerendered video. Since the displays get driven by a computer with an internet connection, with some additional programming it can be used to display useful information on the wall, like calendar, world clock, rss feeds, or other content depending on the context.

Current state

At its current state, the first working prototype of Hedera Digitalis is a non-interactive video-painting designed to be set up in the Hungarian Telekom’s main office.