The BIX light and media facade consumes as much energy as an average single-family house in a year. In the future, however, it will only illuminate the night if there were enough hours of sunshine in Graz during the day. This concept of media artist Onur Sönmez for the BIX project Sunscriber ensures that the energy required for the BIX light and media facade is generated by means of a photovoltaic system on the roof of the Needle. This way, nature will determine whether and how long the BIX lights up at night. This approach is Sönmez’ answer to the requirements for the mitigation of climate change and to the lower energy consumption needed to achieve this. In general, the project is a critical statement on energy generation and the naturalness of light in urban space. It is implemented with the help of Jona Hoier and Mehmet Ekinci. The project ties in perfectly withthe ecology-focused sectionof the exhibition what will be, a part of SHOWING STYRIA in the Kunsthaus Graz primarily themed around the future of Styria.

Onur Sönmez is a media artist and designer and has realized media facade projects in Linz (Ars Electronica Center), Istanbul (Zorlu PSM Istanbul) and Barcelona (Torre Glòries building), among others.

Jona Hoier Born in 1982 in Graz, Jona Hoier is working in the field of new media art and design as a creative engineer, educator and artist. He is a founding member of the artist collective sofa23 since 2001 and founded his own studio “Jona Hoier Media Art & Design” in Vienna in 2010.

His works have been commissioned and shown internationally  including Ars Electronica, Austrian Institute of Technology, Diagonale, Istanbul Design Biennial, Microsoft, Saatchi Gallery London, Sony Playstation and the Vienna Design Week.  

Mehmet Ekinci is a Ph.D. candidate in the Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. He studied Molecular Biology and Genetics (B.Sc.) and Sociology (M.A.) at Bogazici University, Istanbul before starting his Ph.D. His research focuses on contemporary life sciences research communities as novel social formations situated in early 21st century political economies with unequally distributed material resources. Ekinci worked as an academic course instructor and taught several science, technology and society themed courses at Cornell University since 2014.

Ekinci is also a freelance writer, translator and editor. Ekinci published a set of articles and book reviews on politics of science in Turkey in publication outlets including Birikim, Metis Kitap, Toplum ve Bilim and YILLIK. He is the chief editor of the STS IstanbuLab Blog, which publishes scholarly articles and interviews bilingually. He has been contributing to the Istanbul-based arts and culture magazine Bant Mag. regularly since 2017. Ekinci translated Zygmunt Bauman and Rein Raud’s Practices of Selfhood into Turkish in 2018. He is part of a collaborative translation project -at Kolektif Kitap Publishing House, Istanbul- for publishing Donna Haraway’s Staying With the Trouble in Turkish (to be released in Spring 2021).

Ekinci collaborates with Onur Sönmez and writes conceptual essays for Sönmez’s artwork. Before Sunscriber, they produced Prothesengott for Digi.logue: Futuretellers Exhibition in 2017.