Urban Visuals » Exhibit Design

Diamond Photo Attache

Nathan — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:02:34 +0000

Here is some documentation from a great project we built for a client that needed a way to quickly and easily get high resolution video of rare coloured diamonds onto the web for an online catalog and auction system.

We designed and built fully self contained “Diamond Photo Attache” to allow the client to seamlessly shoot videos of the diamonds which are automatically uploaded the web masters’ servers for them to incorporate into the database. Additional features included auto naming the the diamonds with drop downs to select their carat value, shape, colour and lot numbers.

The Diamond Photo Attache in its case. Super tough, you could drive over it with a truck!

First layer: 13″ macbook pro

Bottom layer: the camera unit.

Everything out of the case: camera unit on left, macbook pro on right, cables and power supplies on the top

Close up showing the high resolution firewire camera in its stored orientation. Sparkle light to the right of the camera.

Fire up the custom application to control the unit. All hardware, motor and lighting is controlled by the software.

All lights on, with gem mounted on turntable.

Side by side show of the whole system.

Gem on the turntable.

Close up of the software: buttons to control lighting and motor and to capture photos or video. When in video mode, the unit receives feedback from the motor and captures exactly one rotation, so minimal further editing of the videos is required.

Science World Consumption Exhibit

Nathan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:46:30 +0000

As the centerpiece for the recently remodelled electricity exhibit, the Consumption Game that we built for Science world commands attention. The goal of the game is to save electricity by turning off appliances as they display on the screens. It’s a race against time as players run around the exhibit, hitting the buttons below each display to deactivate the appliance. Meanwhile the LED tube displays remaining electricity, and the screens on the central column display remaining electricity and elapsed time.

This exhibit blends standard hands on game play with a digital component that allows for the game to be adjusted and updated with simple software changes. The software and media driven interface will allow us the ability to create a completely different game in the future, with minimal hardware changes.

The game was written using the Processing framework for Java. The exhibit uses a number of custom interface elements, including 14 Digitalview media players controlled by RS-232, 15 practically indestructible buttons to start the game and “turn off” appliances, and a custom acrylic LED column with 5 channels of RGB LEDs, all controlled by a Mac mini. Additionally, the unit can re controlled remotely and all system variables and timers can be configured over a web interface.

St Regis Tower Interactive Model

Nathan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:06:01 +0000

Urban Visuals created another interactive model control system for the St. Regis development in Las Vegas. The 50 story high rise condo will be located between the Palazzo and the Venetian hotel on the Vegas Strip, and the preview sales centre is in one of the penthouse suites of the Palazzo hotel, overlooking the building site, as well as much of Las Vegas.

The control system uses an Arduino control board and two custom built 256 channel LED control boxes. The Flash based touch interface (built by Lightroom), communicates with a Processing application which sends commands to the ardiuno and the LED controllers.

The fantastic model was built by The Model Shop in Vancouver, and included individual LEDs for each of it’s 422 suites. Each suite can be individually illuminated, as well as each floor, groups of several floors and random suite illumination (as shown). Light animations also light the entire building suite by suite or floor by floor.

The touch screen with the model in the reflection.

Nathan working on the model.

Enhanced presentation using UV Colourmatch

konstantinos — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:56:26 +0000

For a recent project for the Puerto Cancun development in Mexico we designed a lighting system that illuminates the interior of an exhibit theatre space according to colours in the video presentation.

Two switches on the wall allow a sales person to choose between playing back English and Spanish versions of the presentation, which when pressed, dim the architectural lighting and begin the show.

Six channels of full colour LED lights follow along with the video, washing the front wall of the theatre with rich light.

Nike Exhibit Design Coachella Music Festival

konstantinos — Mon, 31 May 2004 19:12:42 +0000

In 2004 we were asked by Nike to design a presentation environment for the launch of the “Art of Speed” launch at the Coachella music festival near Palm Springs, California. This was no easy task, both the time line and general conditions of a festival setting posed extreme limitations on what we could execute on-site. Nike creative staff in Oregon had initially asked us for something akin to a wind tunnel with a floating presentation screen. As the process moved forward we submitted several sketches outlining initial design ideas. As the time line was incredibly short, we could fabricate very little and had to rely on readily available temporary structures such as marquee tents and trussing normally used by stage lighting designers. In our final round of the design process we were informed by the festival that only standard marquee tents were allowed to be used by any and all sponsors on site, including Nike.