Urban Visuals » Media Installation

125 Steps at Summer Live

Nathan — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 18:47:37 +0000

To celebrate the 125 years since its incorporation, the City of Vancouver put on a three-day music festival in Stanley Park featuring many local acts.

Urban Visuals was asked to create an art piece that ‘maps’ images to the trees using projection. We built custom software that could see audience members and used their position to generate the effects that we projected onto the trees. We also built additional iPhone control software that allowed us to tweak the display from anywhere on site.

Here are some pictures (click on the photos to zoom in):

Illuminate Yaletown Installations

Nathan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 05:42:01 +0000

In early February 2011, Urban Visuals mounted two installations for Illuminate Yaletown. Billed as an “Exploration of Art and Light,” Illuminate Yaletown is an annual lighting festival that takes place in Vancouver’s historic warehouse district, Yaletown, with local and international participants.

Our first installation, Fiction Facades, won second place in the festival. It consisted of a huge exterior building projection, that spanned the entire 100 foot width of the heritage Yaletown Building. Using custom live mapping software, we were able to create animations and effects that react to the placement of the windows. Objects would fall and bounce around the building facade and make sounds as they bounced off certain objects.

Thanks to AVW/Telav for so graciously providing the projectors for the installation.

Our second installation, Data Queue, utilized custom LED panels that react and respond to peoples’ movement in and around the installation.

Here is a selection of images of our installations garnered from the Flickr Illuminate Yaletown Photo Contest.

Millenium Tower Interactive Model

Nathan — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:15:57 +0000

In November, 2007 Urban Visuals developed a custom control system for an architectural model of a 60 story tower being built in San Fransisco. The Millenium Tower sales centre featured a tower nearly 7 feet tall with individual LED lights for each of its 400 suites. Additional rear projection panels hung from the ceiling afforded displayed 360 degree views from each of the the floors of the building.

The installation was controlled by a touch screen PC which communicated via Processing (processing.org) and custom built hardware to interface with the 800 wires exiting the base of the model. It was programmed to illuminate an individual suite, a whole floor, and whole sections of the building — the building is divided into three product offerings.

Lightmodal Public Art Installation

Nathan — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:59:24 +0000

Urban Visuals and Organelle Design were selected among a talented pool of artists and architects as winners of the Necklace Project Competition for the City of Surrey. As a public art piece, the project is conceived as an interactive, light-based installation along the elevated Skytrain line. The piece will be activated by the confluence of transportation modes by a series of vibration, acoustic and electrostatic sensors. The result is an organic, aurora borealis-like display of colors that celebrates technology and alternative means of transport.

To be completed in 2011.

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.

2010 Olympic Rings

Nathan — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:03:41 +0000

The 40 metre wide Olympic Rings in Vancouver during the 2010 winter Olympics were seen by millions of viewers as a backdrop to the accredited television media.

Urban Visuals was commissioned to create a number of animated sequences to play on the rings during special events and when winning medals were achieved by Canadian athletes.

We used Processing to create the animated sequences and to output them in the proprietary xml format the that lights required.

Watch the official unveiling of the rings, presented by the Premier of BC below:

Public Dreams Anniversary Fundraiser

Nathan — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:34:48 +0000

A couple weeks ago, we had the pleasure of helping out the Public Dreams Society with their 25th anniversary fundraiser.
We brought out a number of our LED panels and even some old school slide projectors. It’s always fun to look through all the binders of slides which not so long ago provided our livelihood. (It’s too bad we never get to use all the 16mm film we shot over the years!)
Here are some pictures of the event.

It was cool to be in the old Storeum space that is now W2. It shows great potential as a new event venue for Vancouver. Check them out for more info. (creativetechnology.org)

Benny Benassi and Armin van Buuren

Nathan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:54:35 +0000

Urban Visuals’ latest production at the Vancouver Convention Centre was a big hit. Blueprint Events brought Benny Benassi and Armin van Buuren for a double header DJ show, and we provided Stage Design and visual production for the event.

We were so busy with the show that we didn’t get a chance to document, but we found these clips from a happy attendee.

Armin van Buuren

Benny Benassi

A long shot of the show.

As the first concert to be hosted at the Convention Centre, we had to be sure everything went smoothly and according to plan. The ten video projectors were driven all driven by Modul8 on one Mac Pro and three Macbook Pros. On the LED side, we had 600 nodes of Colorkinetics iflex and 14 CK Colorblaze units all driven by Madrix.

Here are some more photos:

LED Panels for Caprice 7 year

Nathan — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:13:48 +0000

Blue Pencil Productions just uploaded this video that was shot during the 7 year anniversary party for the caprice nightclub in vancouver. It has some great shots of our most recent LED panels, that we rented to the Caprice for their event. The panels are 12 inches by 75 inches with 100 LEDs at 3 inch spacing. They are bendable, flexible and lightweight and can be mounted in any orientation. For this installation we installed the panels as three columns that extended up behind the DJ booth. The six panels are mapped and driven by our Madrix control system.

Check out a spec sheet for the LED panels:

Inkhouse 2010

Nathan — Fri, 07 May 2010 22:02:43 +0000

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, we VJed and installed an LED wall for the Inkhouse Venue. Acts during the the 19 shows included Armin Van Buuren, Chrystal Castles, MSTRKRFT, Steve Aoki, Deadmau5, LMFAO, and Benny Benassi.

Scroll down for videos.

And videos