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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.

Recent Project: Sound Responsive Room

konstantinos — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:44:59 +0000

Working in collaboration with Battersby Howat Architects, we augmented the design for Shine nightclub by illuminating and controlling a series of wall panels. An algorithm was used to generate a pattern that was laser cut out of 44 steel panels, these panels are back lit by sound responsive lighting. The result is a totally immersive sound and light experience, stay tuned for more pictures and video of the system in operation.

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Protected: UV Motion Design

konstantinos — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:21:59 +0000

Circlesquare Live – MIDI driven stage-show

konstantinos — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:22:11 +0000

Urban visuals has developed a stage show for the circlesquare live shows that is run by the music being played live. Both the visuals and the lighting are triggered by the music, a midi note sent by the drummer will trigger a specific video to play which in turn controls the colour and animation of the stage lighting. This live show has been performed and several notable festivals including Sonar 2005 and Mutek Mexico 2007.

Bespoke lighting control

konstantinos — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:23:12 +0000

For each of our installations we create a custom control interface for the venue. This allows for a more user friendly and site specific approach, something that is created specifically for the people that use the system. With this approach the possibilities with respect to what the interface can be are endless. Sometimes are more raw literal interface is more practical, where the light patterns, colour and animation are clearly shown (above left) or an interface that refers to the physical design elements where the lights are imbedded (above right).

Animated Wall Panels

konstantinos — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:04:43 +0000

For the Century house re-design we worked with the interior designers to integrate LED lighting into portions of the interior. Our favorite part was the creation ‘animated fabric’ wall panels, where we brought the panels to life by illumination and animation. The result was a wall of animated dots that would randomly appear within the pattern of the fabric, the animated dots can appear in any colour and respond to sound or user input via a touch screen across the room.

Speaking at Siggraph

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 06:52:49 +0000

Urban Visuals’ Nathan Whitford spoke at a Special Session roundtable at the 2004 Siggraph Conference in Los Angeles on August 11.

From the Siggraph site:

VJ: The Art of Live Video Performance
The explosive new generation of visual artists known as VJs and the dozens of companies that support them with new tools, equipment, and software are continually creating more complex and vivid presentations. In this roundtable discussion hosted by Los Angeles Video Artists (LAVA), several respected and widely known VJs offer insight into current and future trends for this adventurous new culture.

Organizer
James Cui, VJ Fader
Los Angeles Video Artists

Panelists
Vello Virkhaus, VJ V2, V Squared Labs Inc.
Radley Marx, VJ OZ, Eoptica/VJTV
Ryan Tandy, Connected System
Ben Sheppee, Davy Force
Nathan Whitford, Urban Visuals