Lights on Tampa - NIE - St. Petersburg Times

Casa Magica

Site: Ft. Brooke Parking Garage (south façade)
Artists: Sabine Weissinger & Friedrich Foerster

Concept: Architectural Projection on Fort Brooke Garage
At first glance, these dazzling images appear to be glamorous embellishments for a utilitarian structure. With closer examination, one sees that each image is a collage that carries specific references to some part of Tampa’s history and identity.

The following images will change throughout the evening on a loop.

Image 1: Arrow, knight helmet, uniform buttons and dress trimming, chipboard wall with leftovers of paint coating and graffiti, lattice structure of avatar

Image 2: Seminole patchwork, Jeans zipper, Seminole coontie plant-rasp, beef

Image 3: Spanish tiles, packed concrete stone, body/skin with tattoo, piercing jewelry, aedes aegypti (yellow fever mosquito), tortoise hatchling

Image 4: Pattern from locomotive engine, high society yachting club ladies/cigarette cards (Plant System), sail, sea and seabed, fossil shark teeth ( Bone Valley)

Image 5: Palm tree trunk, submunition, pattern from pursuit fighter (Phantom), “Desert Storm” teddy bear

Image 6: Football, alligator, bollito, pattern from historic coat of arms, pinball meter

Casa Magica, “Revamp Fort Brooke”
Fort Brooke Garage is a huge rough concrete building sitting at the edge of downtown Tampa. Its name recalls the military structure, which in the view of modern western history marked the foundation of Tampa, and was located at this site.

German artists Friedrich Förster and Sabine Weissinger are the creativity behind Casa Magica, and their art is enhanced by the structure of the garage. “The finding of this rudimentary façade decoration may actually be identified as the toehold of our piece,” Förster and Weissinger state. “We chose to develop a series of images, that work with the formal strategies of décor, like e.g. pattern and repetition, non-realistic perspective and proportion, fitting into the existing architectural structure.

At first glance these nightdresses of Fort Brooke Garage’s south façade might seem a glamorous embellishment. They mean to do so, thus recalling, that this esthetics for centuries has been a bellicose magic-cap, and revealing to the closer view, its un-picturesque aspects.”

There is no mandatory order of the six images. They will be given a factual order for their performance in a loop, which – after set in operation – will not have any noticeable beginning or end of the series. What is kept noticeable is the change of images, which is technically the change of real physical slides.