Nicht meine Baustelle

Nicht meine Baustelle (German for “not my construction site”) is an art installation and the master’s project of Annika Braun, Anja Gutschmidt, Alina Traun and Sebastian Scholtze. The interactive exhibit tries to get people more involved in politics: seven stations, themed like a real construction site in your city, each highlight a reason why people might not want to get involved.

Two of the stations needed some technical doodads, and that’s where I came in. Together with my master colleagues Alexander Gewald and Nico Weiser we made them reality. My role was technical consultant during planning, managing the tech team and implementing the solution.

This station lets people vent whatever bothers them: step into a portable toilet, close the door, open the lid, leave a voice message, close the lid and then hear the messages of your predecessors.

A Raspberry Pi 3B+ hidden inside the loo, powered by a power bank, runs a Python script with a microphone, a Bluetooth speaker and four buttons on its GPIO pins: door closed, lid open/closed, skip recording and reset. Recordings are saved to a USB stick for easy curation, and audio prompts tell users when recording starts and when their message is saved.

This station addresses the fear of showing your opinion in public. Participants take a question from a small podium and lift either the yes or the no pylon, which plays booing or cheering. Again a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a Bluetooth speaker and a power bank, with buttons as pressure plates under the pylons (soldered by yours truly).

The most annoying part was getting the Pis to consistently autostart into the Python scripts. Crontabs didn’t work, since Bluetooth and audio had to be available first. In the end we solved it with custom .desktop files that run a launcher shell script once the desktop is loaded, which opens a terminal running the Python script.

The installation was awarded by the CCA and ADC in 2025:

• 3x Gold ADC Talent Award
• 1x Bronze CCA Venus Award
• 3x Shortlist CCA Venus Award
• ADC CC Stuttgart Winner