Restzeichen is a architectural art installation initiated by Dresden based artist Paul Elsner. In cooperation with Quadrature and André Zibell the electronic hardware, cases and software of the installation was custom designed and constructed.

The installation consists of 75 seven-segment-displays mounted on top of an old power station in the centre of Dresden. Each segment ist seperately controllable so it is possible to diplay text an animation. The seven-segment-display was one of the first technical methods to display digital information and is a very limited method to display text as some letters are respresented as the same symbol on the display. In contrast to advertisment displays the message isn’t obvious and easy to read and by this uncovers the loss of information due to the digitalisation of information.

Video by quadrature, photos by quadrature and 507nanometer.