The artificial cloud floats apparently weightless in Central Station’s Wanner hall – it is almost unbelievable that the installation including its suspension weighs six tons. Hundreds of passers-by gaze upwards as assistants pull NOVA out of an ingenious packaging with long ropes and it then starts up its play of colours, accompanied by a futuristic performance. The cuboid (dimensions: 5 x 5 x 1 metres) consists of 25,000 light spheres that can be actuated individually. Each of the spheres is equipped with a microprocessor. They are capable of generating more than 16 million colours and can do so in two or three dimensions. This enables images, photos, movements and even films to be displayed in astonishingly clear resolution. It is made possible by a refresh rate of 25 images per second, which corresponds to that of a TV set.

A conjunction of nature and engineering, intellect and art

“We want to stimulate the appetite for knowledge,” Ernst Hafen explained to the media on the occasion of the presentation of NOVA in Zurich Central Station. He said ETH was using the novel construction to continue its dialogue with the population – a strategic plan for which clear signs had been set in the previous anniversary year, e.g. with the “Welten des Wissens” (Worlds of Knowledge). For the ETH President, NOVA also represents a bridge between the sphere of the exact sciences on the one hand and that of art, the humanities and the social sciences on the other: “NOVA is intended as a platform for the vitally important dialogue between science, society and culture. The natural sciences and technology do not become communicable until we set them in a social-cultural context. This project does that in an exemplary fashion,” said Ernst Hafen.

A signal at Switzerland’s meeting point

“ETH symbolically descends to meet the commuters,” is how Urs Schlegel described the new objet d’art in the Central Station. He is the Property Manager with SBB, one of the major partners of the ETH anniversary. He said the NOVA high-tech eye-catcher suited this concourse, probably the most important in the country, and dominated by the themes of meeting, culture (the “Guardian Angel” by Niki de Saint Phalle and Mario Merz’s “Philosopher’s Egg”) and services. Thierry Lalive d'Epinay, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SBB, added that ETH and SBB had both come into being during Switzerland’s foundation epoch and had become “institutionalised advantages of the location". The associations also extended to today’s scarce finances, but above all to the intensive ETH-SBB transfer of knowledge. In his message of greeting, Elmar Ledergerber, mayor of Zurich, said that through NOVA ETH was again moving one step closer to the people: “It is decisive for the prosperity of ETH, and thus of Zurich as well, that it displays its achievements in public and awakens interest in them.“ Meinrad Eberle, the anniversary delegate and initiator of the project, recalled that according to an opinion survey the travelling public had wanted something with an emotional, artistic, rather subdued and non-commercial appearance. According to Eberle, they had been working towards this since 2003, although with one condition: “The background must suit ETH, i.e. it must be high-tech," and he stressed that all the costs – which amount to about two million Swiss francs – had been collected through sponsoring. (1)

A symbol of the “Third Culture”

The basic idea for NOVA originated from Martina Eberle, the project manager’s daughter. She is a graphic designer and specialist in the New Media field, has an MBA from Columbia University and worked on the artistic design for Expo.02, among other things. As Meinrad Eberle made clear, her concept was outstanding among a series of suggestions that were presented anonymously.

Martina Eberle explained that she had drawn inspiration from C.P. Snow’s thesis of the “Third Culture” (1963). (2) Snow believed he had detected that a new generation of scientists was growing to maturity and that their mission was to close the communications gap that existed between the two traditional cultures – well-read intellectuals on the one hand and the natural scientists on the other.

A showcase and platform for an exchange with the public: NOVA is a crystallization vessel of central ETH topics. large

Research made to fly: installing NOVA high above the passengers’ heads in the Wanner Hall. large

Each of the 25,000 light spheres is equipped with a processor that communicates with the other spheres. large

Eberle: “Nova is a platform on which, by analogy with Snow, universal images of our world can be displayed. Categories of content disappear, and so do the supposed sharp boundaries between the fields of science from which the images originate.”

However, anyone who really wants to know precisely from which “kitchen” the visual images originate can find guidance via information desks in the group meeting point zone. The first phase will show, entirely in images, the interpreted results from numerous ETH institutes, e.g. from Climatology, Astrophysics, Biochemistry or Fluid Dynamics. In the course of time, and entirely consistent with the intended dialogue, the intention is to expand the participative aspect: according to Martina Eberle, “Except for commercial purposes, we are receptive to co-operative approaches. For example there have already been indications from the film and art scene of great interest in producing content for NOVA.”

“Slightly crazy”

On the software side, NOVA’s reins were held by Christoph Niederberger from the Computer Graphics Lab of ETH. Niederberger says that “The crucial problem for the imaging process was finding the right relationship between the size of the luminous elements and their spacing distance.” NOVA consists of 100,000 colour LEDs and a total of 300,000 individual LEDs. The data flowrate is approximately 32 Mbit/second. Anton Gunzinger, ETH Professor for Electrical Engineering and businessman with the Supercomputing Systems Company, and who was responsible for the hardware side, thinks it is “A slightly crazy project.“ According to Gunzinger, “NOVA’s maximum power consumption is 64 kilowatts. The temperature and cabling for NOVA with its 25,000 processors was an enormously demanding challenge. We are happy that we have brought it all under control." For three years the approximately 300,000 passengers who come through Zurich Central Station every day will now have the opportunity to follow the continuously changing productions.