Porsche Digital in Berlin: a picture made of many fields

Where many hands work on one piece at the same time, it easily turns into a patchwork. That is the worry that comes first with a creative format for a larger group, and it is justified. The legal wall where Porsche Digital worked shows how to meet it.

The starting point

Anyone planning a team event with paint faces a decision that is rarely spoken out loud. Either everyone paints for themselves, which is quick and ends with many small pieces. Or everyone works on one shared picture, which ends with a result bigger than any single contribution.

That is not a matter of taste. The decision determines what is standing there after the event, and how many people actually have something to do while it runs. The second route has the familiar catch: a shared picture is only one if it fits together at the end.

What you see on the wall

The picture is landscape format and sits inside a continuous black frame. Inside it is divided into individual rectangular colour fields, each in its own colour, from yellow through turquoise to violet. Over these fields lie black bars that come together as blocky letters.

More hangs on this division than meets the eye. Every field is a closed surface with its own edges. Whoever works on one field does not reach into the one next to it, and nobody has to wait for a spot to open up at the front. The work is divisible without anyone having to keep the division in their head. It is on the wall.

The line that holds it all together

A single dark red line runs across all the fields. It runs flat through the fields on the left, rises into an arc above the pink area and continues on the right. It does not stop at the field edges. It runs across them and produces a long silhouette in side view.

This is where parts become a picture. The fields make the work divisible, the line makes the result a whole. Whoever sees only the fields sees a collection side by side. Whoever sees the line sees a motif. A shared piece therefore does not need fewer hands. It needs one layer that lies over all of them.

The location

The work was done at a legal wall in Berlin's Mauerpark, outdoors. The wall is old, layers of paint are flaking at the top edges, behind it floodlight masts stand against a blue sky. To the right and left are older pieces by other people, a green lettering Dream with a yellow sun, further right large letters.

That is exactly part of a legal wall. You do not get a white canvas but a surface with a history. That is precisely why the black frame around the picture is there. It separates your own piece from the background, and from that edge on it no longer matters what was on the wall before.

What was standing there at the end

At the end there is one continuous picture on the wall, not one piece per person. It stays where it was made, and it stands next to other people's pictures.

That also makes clear what this case is not proof of. Anyone who wants something to take away that will hang in the entrance afterwards needs a format with canvases. Anyone who wants a result a whole group can work on at the same time finds the construction for it here.

Frequently asked questions about this project

Why does a picture made of many parts not look like patchwork in the end?

Because one continuous element runs across the parts. At Porsche Digital that is a dark red line drawn across all the colour fields that does not stop at the field edges.

That decision is made before the date, not during it. A picture may break into any number of parts as long as something runs across them: a line, a horizon, a colour that returns in every part. If that element is missing, what remains at the end is exactly the impression you wanted to avoid, and it can hardly be repaired afterwards because the parts are already finished. That is why the question of the continuous element belongs in the preparation and not on the day itself. For your enquiry one sentence is enough: what should be seen in the picture. Whether that becomes a silhouette as at Porsche Digital or something entirely different, we settle with you beforehand so that nobody has to improvise at the wall.

What happens when there are already pictures on the wall?

Your own piece gets its own frame. At Porsche Digital a continuous black bar runs around the whole picture, separating it from the older background and from the neighbouring pictures.

This question comes up almost every time a legal wall is discussed, and rightly so. A legal wall is never empty. It carries older layers, flaking paint and other people's pictures right next to it. On the photos afterwards none of that shows once your own piece is framed, because the frame sets the edge where the picture begins. For you that means two things. You do not have to look for an unpainted surface, which greatly widens the choice of possible locations and is often decisive at short notice. And you should know beforehand that the result stays on the wall instead of coming back to the office.